The Big Bang
by Sarah Rose Serena
Summary: He's breaking all the rules with this one, confusing the hell out of himself, and he knows now that there's no way on Earth he'll ever make it out of Zoe Zuko's web intact. By the time she's through here in Harlan, there will be nothing left of him.
1. a stranger walks into a bar

**The Big Bang**

a _Justified_ story

_Sarah Rose Serena_

(A/N: This is a crossover with one of my original series: Chronicles of Eden Falls. It's written pretty standalone, though; no recap needed. Pretty much just an introductory segment, getting all that pesky exposition out of the way. Let me know if you're interested or not. Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll say that there's a reason I use the word "crossover" to describe this story. It's genre-bending.)

Rated: Young Adult (for violence, occasionally strong language, and mildly mature themes. Not terribly explicit, I don't think.)

Disclaimer: All mistakes are my own. (As for anything else, well, I think that's sort of redundant given the entire nature of the site.)

* * *

><p>I. <em>a stranger walks into a bar . . .<em>

Zoë Zuko is a strange girl, living in a strange world. Or maybe it isn't the world that's strange. Maybe it's just this godforsaken town she's found herself in. All around the world, vast space and time, it's always fundamentally the same. And it never gets any easier to stomach.

On this particular evening, it all starts in a down-and-dirty tavern, some backwater bar in the regrettable hill country of Eastern Kentucky. _Cold Hard Bitch_ from Jet is pumping from the ragged jukebox in the corner, summing up her current mood pretty succinctly. The whiskey sitting on the bar in front of her will be her third. The glass tumbler her fingers clutch is about as skuzzy as one would expect from a dive like this. It's the perfect setting to drown her sorrows and wallow in her misery. And why the hell not, right? What else has she got to do until the witching hour arrives?

_Absolutely nothing_ is what.

The burn of the liquor distracts her from her thoughts, notches down on her maudlin existence, reminds her that she can still _feel_ like a normal human being. She knows she shouldn't be drinking while she's on call. But it's been a rough week, and if ever she was gonna say _fuck it_, today would be the day.

Today _is_ the day, apparently.

An hour in, she's camped out on a corner barstool, as far as she can get from the ragtag of obnoxious hillbillies in the middle of the small-spaced joint. Two in particular in the midst are being as loud as possible about their vehement derogatory sentiments toward the opposite sex, and it is _really_ beginning to chafe on her last nerve. Not needing an ill-timed commotion, she continues her struggle of tuning them out. But it's a difficult feat.

Fortunately, another distraction saunters through the door before she can get too steamed up—in the form of a tall, dark, lanky stranger. Her eyes start from the muddy boots, slide up loose jeans over long legs, and catch for a second on the glint of a federal badge hooked to his belt. On the other hip is his holstered weapon, not quite hidden in shape under the blazer left to flap open.

Trouble? Zoë goes stiff, considering what could have possibly drawn the attention of authorities to her here. There's no trail. She never leaves one. And she's the only person in the world that should be aware of the upcoming incident here in Harlan County. So she relaxes back into her stool and downs the rest of her cheap whiskey.

The lawman bypasses the rowdy crowd and finds himself a secluded section on the other end of the bar. He props an elbow on the wood, taps twice for the barkeep's attention, and orders himself a dose of Jim Beam.

He's had a rough day, too. One glance at the weary draw of his handsome features and she's sure of it. The graying 5 o'clock shadow across his jaw adds to the effect. He can't be over 42; he shouldn't be going gray already. But life takes a toll.

Zoë knows that better than anyone.

_He's wearing a tie_, she thinks with an amused quirk of her lips before she sets her glass aside. Not that the look doesn't work for him. But with the rest of the townsfolk garbed in soot-stained rags and woodland layers, he's out of place.

Of course, the beige cowboy hat canted on his head makes sure of that. And the badge. He's not flaunting it. In fact, if she hadn't been trained to absorb the details, she wouldn't have noticed. But folks around these parts rarely look kindly on lawmen. And from the sidelong glances of the other patrons, this one is obviously well-known.

_Even worse._

Staring across the dimly-lit room under hooded lashes, Zoë indulges her curiosity and opens up a link. The tingle of magic stirs inside of her, awakening, fresh and recharged from the recent absence of use. Tendrils of power outstretch like mist in the wind, seeping into the pores of time, giving her an insight. As if she's flipping through a scrapbook of memories.

It's funny how people leave imprints in the fabric of time, important moments potent enough to stick around, like spectral ghosts of what has passed. Endless lifetimes of knowledge and experience are all around us, a vast well of untouched potential. Only ones like Zoë can tap into the well and survive.

Mother Sentinel, some call her.

The title is just a way the Powers That Be designate the current guardian, chosen of a long bloodline of natural travelers, who are responsible for maintaining the integrity of their reality's timeline.

Not that she's a real mother or anything. Sure, she's been walking this world for 26 years so far. But she's led a busy life. There's never been time for that sort of thing. Besides, she couldn't do that to a child. Juggling the responsibility of her duty with raising children is selfish. Seeing the way her mother handled it, Zoë determined a long time ago that she won't be having a family—or serious attachments of any kind, if she can help it—so long as she holds the seat of caretaker for her bloodline.

Being a Zuko woman is hard enough work as it is. Some days, it's like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. Literally. It's up to the Mother Sentinel alone to preserve the timeline. As far as Zoë's been told, her ancestry is the only known record of abilities like hers, travelers capable of telling authenticity and registering disturbances in the space-time continuum.

Sounds like _Star Trek_ or something, right? That's what her friend Adele keeps harping on. Personally, she'd compare her life to _Back to the Future_ without the DeLorean, if anything.

But it's not as complex as it all sounds. Really, she's more of a homegrown witch than a sci-fi babe. Nomadic in nature, Zoë hails from the mystic-laden Eden Falls. It's a cape up north that happens to lay on the biggest supernatural fault in the country—meaning ley line intersections, a whole hornet's nest of 'em.

In all honesty, she wishes she could escape it all. But there's nowhere to hide from fate, even for a time-traveler. So she settles for momentary distractions, because it's the best she can do without compromising her duty, and it's _almost_ enough to get her through each day as it comes.

The quiet cowboy at the other end of the bar could be one of her better diversions. Soaking up a few snippets of his hard-lived life, she feels herself develop a fast affection for the stranger. Mostly, it's 'cause he makes her nostalgic in a pleasant sort of way.

She'd known a lawman like him once, a very long time ago. In the Old West, if you'll believe it, before territories were settled and civilization rejuvenated. He's been dust for centuries now, but it's only been a few years for Zoë, and the ache knows just when to resurface. This one in the here and now is soft-spoken, self-assured, with a hint of danger lurking beneath his reserved demeanor. Very sexy. And oh-so much like her old flame that she knows she's gonna come back to Harlan after all is said and done.

If she didn't have a breach to prevent tonight, she'd be dying to take him home. It's been so long since she's had her way with such a delicious specimen of the male variety. Companionship is important, a reminder of what she's protecting. Of course, that's what she has Isolde for. The blonde Irishwoman assigned to be her Keeper isn't exactly Zoë's type, no, but she's a hell of a conversationalist. So scratching the itch is out. But it's been surprisingly nice to have a helping hand in all of this.

_Had_, a traitorous part of her mind whispers, poking the wound that's still so very fresh._ Don't have her anymore._

But that particular state of affairs isn't going to last. She made a promise; she damn well intends to keep it. She'll find Isolde. She'll find her and she'll bring her back. She doesn't have a choice.

That said, midnight is nearing and Zoë's grown lightheaded in a worrisome way. Drinking on the job is a big no-no. _This_ is why.

Also, she's about to have a redneck problem.

The ivory dress she's wearing, with the billowy sleeves slit to her elbows, laced bodice, flowing skirt, and her black corset beneath sure are drawing a lot of funny looks. Has been all night, really. She hasn't had a chance to change since her stopover in London—circa 1822. Underneath, she's got leggings and leather riding boots in case she needs to get physical. Still, she makes quite a sight.

Whispers of a geek convention normally keep passersby out of her hair. But out in the deep-seated boondocks of Harlan, it's not a likely cover. So the _crazy girl_ assumption generally circulating has allowed her to be left alone, pretty much, up to this point. Obviously, though, it's too much to ask for that to last.

"Hey there, lo—" Whatever crude commentary the scraggly man had been uttering never forms, because the second his beefy paw lands on Zoë's shoulder from behind, she's spinning her barstool around and twisting his thumb into a pressure lock. It makes his knees buckle as he yells out in surprise and just a bit of pain.

Small joint manipulation is by far her favorite grappling technique.

"Save it," she says with a flawless air of impatient boredom. "I'm not interested."

One of the unwinding miners had dropped down beside the lawman at some point, but their hushed conversing cut off at the man's exclamation, and both are peering curiously at Zoë.

A snarky remark is on the tip of her tongue for all onlookers. For some inexplicable reason, though, maybe common sense, she bites down on it. Instead, she maneuvers the redneck's wrist to glance at his wristwatch, realizes it's nearly time.

"Word to the wise," she tells him, releasing her hold and gathering her messenger bag. She tosses a bill at the barkeep and brushes by. "Don't lay hands on an unknown woman unless she invites it."

Without hesitation, she strides out. One last glance at the lawman and she accidentally catches his gaze. It makes her want to stay. Of course she doesn't.

Outside, Zoë draws in a deep breath of fresh—somewhat—air and sinks into the darkness of the stormy night. Thick clouds gather in the sky, ready to open up and downpour at any given moment, blocking out the azure moonlight more effectively than the dense canopy of treetops extending for miles in every direction. Lots of pine for a big freaking mountain.

It's moments like these that Zoë wishes she were a smoker. It's a nasty habit, sure, but it'd make lurking in the shadows of the tavern's rundown parking lot far less creepy.

"Cinderella," she murmurs in singsong, "dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss her fellow," and on it goes as the seconds roll past.

Not even 10 minutes later, a stream of noise flows from the opened entrance as the lawman emerges, all by his lonesome. He lets the door swing shut behind him, pauses to take in his surroundings, and then heads for a dark sedan at the edge of the lot.

Proverbial clock strikes 12. Zoë's stomach is already in knots, but now it sinks, because she gets the likely gist of things, and she doesn't like it.

She's so busy watching the cowboy that she's too late to stop the first projected star. Luckily, he spots the glint of steel in the sickly light of the lot's lamppost and drops into a crouch, gun drawn. The weapon shatters the glass of his vehicle's side window, right where he'd been standing to unlock the door.

Zoë knows the weapon well, has deflected it a thousand times before, and recognizes it like the back of her hand, because it's always trying to kill her. Three long points, serrated, curved for optimal velocity. But the lawman's probably never seen anything like it. She notes the bewildered crease to his brow, even as she's searching the line of trees for the assailant. She can't make her move yet, needs to wait for the next strike, see where it comes from. But it doesn't take long.

A second star is sailing through the air, a blur of polished steel, until she waves her left hand in a crescent motion, sifting that nifty Zuko magic through the air. The breeze rustling her long locks cuts out. The blurry star is frozen midflight, halfway to the lawman, who is also frozen.

Okay, not technically _frozen_, because that implies a true stasis. Time hasn't completely stopped progression. It's only slowed—infinitesimally—for the time being. The Molasses Effect, as Isolde calls it. _Called it_, she corrects herself. Masochism, party of one, right over here.

With him taken out of the equation, temporarily, Zoë concentrates on her auxiliary objection. She shakes off the shadows, steps purposefully into the glow of the lamppost, and watches as a quintet of red-robed females coalesce from the encroaching woods.

Sirens, some call them.

Operatives for the Imperial Order—a clan of resistors who consistently try to alter the timeline for their own purposes, generally wreaking havoc. Aside from basically being terrorists that only she can deter, they are a perennial pain in the ass.

Because of a curse cast by her ancestor, the original Mother Sentinel, Zoë is untouchable during daylight hours. It's a way of more or less preventing a Zuko's work from following her home. When the sun goes down, though, she has to be forever wary of the red Sirens.

Every time she turns around, the Order is trying to eliminate her, especially when they're about to pull a big stunt that she'll doubtlessly have to clean up after.

Wearing white, they are smalltime, mostly harmless. But the ones in red are almost _always_ out for blood.

Decked in unprofessional chiffon and frilly veils, these girls look more like a clique of bridesmaids or succubi than deadly assassins. But a femme fatale is a femme fatale, and Zoë knows better than most how deceiving appearances can be.

Zoë also has to blend in, which leads her into some bizarre and highly inappropriate costuming. It's part of the gig. What's _their_ excuse? God knows.

"Come for a party?" she quips, while the Sirens fan out, thinking to circle her. By now, the lawman has almost made it to his feet, two-handed grip on his Glock, bringing it up in a vague aim. Five more minutes and he'll have it set. "C'mon, girls. Let's not go through all this _again_. We all know how it ends. Why not cut your losses? We can all go home, make the most of it." Sighing, she slips her hands into the folds of her skirt, reaching the holsters strapped to her thighs. Her long fingers wrap around the hilts of her daggers. "No? Alright then . . ."

The red Sirens converge on her all at once. Five isn't nearly enough to make this challenging. She bends under a crescent kick, twirling to avoid a low jab, and lands a succession of lightning-quick strikes, knocking two of the five backward from the fray. She uses a lot of her hilts, bashing with sharp _snaps_, and the blades deflect a flurry of attacks with the clinking _clang_ of steel-on-steel.

One dagger slices in an upswing, carving the flesh of a redhead's throat; not enough to gush from the carotid artery, but deep enough to make her think twice. An added roundhouse ensures that one is out of the fight.

Zoë whirls to finish the rest left standing, only to find that a trio has retreated, melting into the shroud of darkness—a definite tactical advantage. She knows they aren't gone, only regrouping. But she takes the opportunity to gather intel.

Sliding one dagger back into its holster frees up one of her hands to rifle through the lawman's jacket while he's still incapacitated. She glances at the badge, getting the fine print, and finds a wallet in his back pocket. It's always eerie this way, interacting with out-of-time people. And she can feel the Sirens lingering nearby, liable to resurge. The jolt of adrenaline flooding her bloodstream keeps her strong, keeps her focused, but she knows she'll begin to tremble as soon as it fades. Happens every time, like clockwork. Nerves of steel, she is not.

Lawman's ID tells her the federal badge is for the U.S. Marshal Service. Frowning, Zoë takes a step back. _Marshal_ as in fugitive apprehension and witness protection? What in the world would the Order care about a marshal for? Not even a genuine marshal. Badge says _Deputy_ U.S. Marshal.

"This week gets weirder and weirder," she drawls, and is just about to get a move on when the Molasses Effect rebounds like a snapped rubber band, jolting time forward.

Lawman pivots back into full-speed awareness, and Zoë reacts on instinct, panicked about getting her head blown off. A hand to his wrist, she forces the point of the gun away from her. But the lawman reacts on instinct as well and counters her just as swiftly. Sparring arms at an impasse, their bodies spin with the contrasting momentum. Zoë brings a knee up, only to find herself slammed back against the side of the sedan, wincing as her bones rattle. She's still got a restraining hand on his wrist—the one with the gun—but he's got hers pinned to the roof of the car—the one with her dagger—at a _very_ acute angle for her shoulder.

For a heartbeat or two, she tries to buck him off, wriggle herself free. It's useless. He's bigger than her—more height, more weight, more muscle mass—and she's let herself get swung into a compromising position. She can't get out of this now without hurting him. That's not her goal. In fact, it's the exact opposite.

Zoë despises fighting defensively. Without the option for lethal force, especially offensive, she loses the upper hand.

Gazes locked, his measuring stare with the contemplative tilt of his head makes her want to squirm. It's a warm feeling—and altogether inappropriate, considering the precarious situation. But the faint curve of his mouth tells her that he notices the moment of attraction that arcs between them then.

"I reckon this is one of those Mexican standoffs," he says in a low, drawling, smoky voice that runs up from the base of her spine in a frisson.

_Focus, Zoë. Focus._ "We do appear to be in a stalemate." Her own voice is too breathy. She can blame it on the adrenaline, but that's a copout, and she's not big on those. "It's easily rectified, I promise. I'm not going to hurt you."

Lawman cants his head, brow rising. "Is that so?" He's projecting irony, confusion, amusement. "So the sharp knife is—"

"Not for you," she finishes. Her eyes never leave his, glacier blue against his rich sienna, but her body goes rigid as she senses the impending onslaught. "Like I said, I won't hurt you. But I can't say the same for _them_."

On the other side of the sedan, a crunch of underbrush echoes with the incessant ring of cicadas. He turns his focus as she lets go of his wrist. The gun swings to their right. He still has her pinned, but it's a perfunctory gesture now, easily adjusted. The whizz of another star—no, two, coming at a diagonal angle—resounds a millisecond after Zoë's hand hits the lawman between his shoulder blades, forcing him down with her behind the hood.

Sirens surge forward, fluid and disorienting, two from the east and one from the west, blocking them in. Zoë is spinning onto her feet to meet an advancer when a _pop_ blasts out in the opposite direction. She catches a striking arm, after dipping under it, and spares a glance over her shoulder to see the redhead crash to her knees, a clean shot to her shoulder.

Zoë forces her opponent's forearm down over her knee, fracturing bone, dodges a curving blade, and drops to sweep the legs out from under her dark-skinned foe. When she lands on her back, she hears the Siren's skull crack against asphalt. She's straddling her chest the next second, burying one of her daggers in the assassin's heart. It's out and she's on her feet before the light leaves the Siren's eyes.

This used to bother her—killing this way. After so many years of necessary evolutions, it's just business as usual tonight.

At the front of the vehicle, her marshal is having a tricky time trying to disarm the remaining duo intent on tag teaming him. The redhead is already on her feet again, cradling her wounded shoulder, leaving the two blondes to finish him. He doesn't want to have to kill them. That's obvious. Whether it's 'cause they're beautiful women, or just 'cause he doesn't know what the hell is going on, Zoë can't tell.

Not that it matters.

Moving in silence, she rounds a mangled pickup truck and blitzes the redheaded Siren from behind. One arm around her throat, she jerks her up against her body, throwing the redhead off balance. The dagger is still dripping with the ebony woman's blood when it slips between Red's posterior ribs. Quick. Quiet.

Lawman very narrowly avoids being skewered, runs out of patience, and hits one of the blondes with 3 bullets to the chest, closely-spaced. The force knocks her back and she rolls across the hood of his sedan.

The last one starts to rush him, he starts to pull the trigger, but Zoë is faster than them both. She catches the Siren from the side, swings her using her own momentum, and slams her facedown into the asphalt. She's got one of the blonde's wrists twisted into an armlock behind her back, keeping her down, and she holsters her dagger to bat the arcing star away. It embeds itself in the base of a nearby cypress.

With a heavy breath, she flips her hair out of her face, glances up to find the marshal investigating the other side of the sedan. He's not happy with whatever he's finding—or _isn't_ finding, more precisely. "Do me a favor, cowboy?"

Lawman looks over at her with a slow shift of his broad-shouldered body, one hand propped at his belt, the other still cradling his pistol beside his thigh, finger on the outside of the guard now. "She's gone," he says, like he can't quite picture it. "They're _all_ gone. No trail."

"Yeah," she retorts, not paying a lot of attention. "Listen, I dropped my bag somewhere in the general vicinity of the lamppost. Could you get it for me, please?"

He gives her a long look, his features blanked out.

Zoë suppresses the blonde's next attempt to overthrow her, cocks her brow at him. "Before I go gray, if you can?"

Finally, he nudges the brim of his hat up from his forehead, rolls his shoulders in one of those _"What are you gonna do?"_ gestures, and mutters wearily, "Why the hell not?"

A few seconds later, he's standing over her shoulder, her messenger bag dangling from one of his fingers. "Thanks." Instead of taking it from him, she delves her free hand inside and rifles blindly. When she retracts, she's got a small glass vial of electric blue liquid inside the cage of her palm. "Get some rest," she deadpans into the thrashing blonde's ear, and then smashes the vial into the nape of her neck. "We'll talk later."

The remaining Siren stills beneath her then as the potion soaks into her skin, coating the bundle of nerves there at the top of her spinal column. She's out like a light. When she wakes, she'll need a serum to loosen the tongue, which Zoë doesn't happen to have on hand. But it shouldn't be too difficult to obtain. And then she'll be able to find out just what this one was all about. Hopefully.

"You some kind of voodoo queen?" he asks when she rises to her feet, shaking off the kinks in her joints. From his tone, she thinks he's joking. Somewhat. Regardless, the real question comes through loud and clear.

"Knockout drugs do wonders," is all the explanation she offers. Turning to face him, she looks the lawman in the eye and shows him she's serious. "Look, I know you're going to want to report this, marshal. But it'd be best if you didn't call this one in."

His curiosity ratchets up _another_ notch. It will be stratospheric soon. "Why do you say that?" Brushing his jacket aside, he snags his hands on his hips and transfers his weight to his back leg, suspicion in the narrowed eyes he studies her with. "Miss . . . ?"

"Zuko," she answers. No aliases here. Whether it's a wise move or not is yet to be determined. "Zoë Zuko." She wets her lips, pushes yards of messy raven waves over her shoulders, and holds out a hand. "You are?"

That keen gaze goes down to the unconscious woman between their feet, flickers over the panorama of the rest of the lot, before he clasps her hand and tightens his hold. "Raylan Givens."

Glancing at their conjoined hands and the pressure of his grip, Zoë spares the lawman one of her milder smiles of radiance. It comes with an endearing tilt of her head, sparkle in her pure blue eyes, and an almost imperceptibly suggestive slant to her body, which is still elaborately-adorned. She knows charm won't work on this one, no matter how it appears, but she doesn't mind.

"You don't have to record _every_ time your weapon is discharged, do you?"

His expression levels on her. It's not a pleasant projection. "When it's discharged into the chest of an unarmed woman, I'd say so."

"Oh, she was armed, alright." Zoë's hand slides reluctantly from his verging-on-bruising grasp. She doubles over, gathering her belongings, and starts to heave the limp Siren up off the ground.

The lawman turns his face skyward for a brief moment. "I have to ask—what is it you think you're doing?"

"Oh," she pants out, readjusting the weight of the blonde, trying and failing to find a workable angle for leverage. "I really need to be going. It's getting late. And I have things to take care of. You understand."

"I really don't," he counters, even as he snakes an arm around the Siren's torso, leaving Zoë with her knees. She starts tugging them toward the other end of the lot, where her borrowed silver Skyline awaits. He goes along with her, mostly because he thinks he may be having one of those outer body experiences, and he hasn't decided how he's going to handle this yet.

He keeps glancing at the entrance to the bar, like he's expecting a crowd to come bustling out at any second. She's not going to tell him that it's standard Siren practice to invoke privacy screens on all of their kill sites. It's magic, baby. Nobody in there heard a thing. She can't exactly explain that to him, though, can she?

When they reach the Skyline, she drops Blondie's legs to fish out her keys and get the car unlocked. Still struck by how surreal he feels, Raylan deposits the unconscious woman atop the lid of the trunk. Once he's sure she's not going to go sliding off, he turns around and falls back against it, hands stuffed into his pockets and brow furrowing.

"Who _are_ you?" he wonders, earning a playful grin from Zoë as she tosses her bag onto the passenger seat. She goes for the backdoor, and Raylan slants into her way, hand landing on hers over the handle. His voice drops a good few octaves. "You can't seriously think I'm going to allow you to abduct this woman."

Zoë keeps a straight face, effortlessly. "Yes, I can."

His hand tightens around hers again, head tips down towards hers, bringing their faces too close for comfort. "You need to tell me what this was all about."

"You wouldn't believe the truth," she tells him, "and I'm not a very talented liar."

"Lady, I don't know what kinda—"

"Zoë," she interjects, sliding her body between his and the door. Their chests brush. She clenches the handle, pops the latch, and presses herself into him to force him to give her ground enough to open the door. "And what else are you going to do? If you go to your boss with this, what are you going to say? You have no bodies, no witnesses, no evidence, and no explanation. They'll think you've lost your mind."

Lawman's other arm comes up over her shoulder, braces against the roof of the car, and he leans in even closer, making Zoë's back arch. "Not if I have you."

A part of her really wants to stick around. She doesn't want to leave him in the lurch. But that's not possible. So she bites down on her more emotional—and physical—urges. She lays a hand on his chest and pushes him back a step, only because he relents.

"Maybe I'll find you sometime," she offers, deceptively light. "Maybe I'll explain."

He cocks his head, like a wolf judging a lie. "Really?" he drawls, unimpressed. "Then why do I get the feeling that if I let you out of my sight, I'm never gonna see you again?"

"You're a very cynical person," she retorts, shimmying out from between him and the door. She angles her way around to the trunk. But his eyes never stray from her, and she knows he won't let her go, so she's going to have to expend a little more energy before the night is over. "My advice . . . your best option is to forget tonight ever happened."

"Not likely."

Leaning a hip against the bumper, Zoë heaves a resigned sigh. "Well, then I guess I'll be seeing you, cowboy."

With one last wistful glance at the handsome man in the white hat, she thrusts out a hand and circles it through the air. Magic sizzles. Time chugs to a crawl.

Flirting with the enigmatic lawman should be the last thing on her mind right now. The tension, that spark, it's all nice and exhilarating, but it's distracting at a very inopportune time for distractions. This "incident" and all the implications are much more complicated than she'd counted on. It was supposed to be one of those quickies, a _wham, bam, thank you, ma'am_. But now she has to dig into this, try to find what made the marshal a target, and somehow ensure that the Order declares this mission a failure and moves on. Nothing sweet and simple about _that_, is there?

This could take a while. That's _less_ time searching for Isolde. No offense to the heartthrob, but she just can't see him having a big enough impact on history to warrant such an excursion. After all, the only reason red Sirens would be sent after him is to change the timeline by making sure he isn't here to affect it. What could the marshal possibly have . . .

Oh.

Maybe the lawman isn't the one that's going to make an impact. Maybe it's the one he's going to _save_, a witness under his protection or something. Yeah, that sounds about right. So all she has to do is keep him alive until she finds out who, what, when, and where. Alright. That's not so bad.

Turning away, Zoë goes to work, hauling the Siren into the backseat of the Skyline. She climbs in, revs the engine, and swerves out onto the gravel road.

Precisely seven heartbeats later, Raylan blinks back into regular awareness, a bit dizzy, and confused as all get-out. The taillights in the distance are nearly gone. He's standing all alone in the middle of the dark parking lot. And he has no clue how that happened. More to drink than he initially thought, maybe? Dammit, tonight's been more bizarre than he knows what to do with.

Frowning into that impenetrable darkness, he snatches the hat off his head, scrubs a hand through his dark hair, and lets out an exhausted sigh. As he's heading back into the bar, he finds a business card stuck in the buckle of his belt, an obsidian cardboard with golden lettering.

_Mother Sentinel. 207-636-ZUKO_

With a foggy shake of his head, Raylan sinks down into his abandoned barstool and promptly orders himself another dose of bourbon on the rocks. The very important question is: Just what is he going to do now? That, and another extremely mystified, "Who _are_ you?"

* * *

><p><em>TBC<em>


	2. and she follows me home

II. _and she follows me home . . ._

Zoë returns to Eden Falls empty-handed. The red Siren is pulled out by an extraction unit before Zoë has the chance to interrogate her. So she goes home, feeling ever the worse for wear.

She dumps the Skyline, no use for it without the extra carry-on, and shifts through the distance spatially. Opening her eyes, she finds herself standing in the middle of a small two-lane road, a residential region. Victorian houses line either side of the street, shuttered windows, peaked roofs. A three-story manor on the incline of the hill stares down at her, blue-painted weatherboarding and white shutters, placid and quietly welcoming.

Dawn is just beginning, but rain is sleeting down, and the thunderclouds cast a gray overcoat across the land. Her hair, her clothes, everything clings, drowning her. Instead of cowering, she turns her face up towards the sky, spreads her arms, thrusts out her tongue. Breathing loosens the bundle of stress clenched in her chest.

In the distance, jagged bluffs tower over the New England coastline, immovable masses unwavering against the assault of the stormy waves. Dense woodlands weave through the small town, acres of dark green blending with the brilliant blues of the ocean and the restless sky.

Shivers ripple through her body as Zoë soaks up the icy downpour, but she stays unmoving there, until the chill has permeated her bones. Slow with reluctance and a long-standing exhaustion, she trudges up onto the curb, up the cement steps, onto the walkway that cuts through her front lawn, and onto the wraparound porch. The overhang blocks out the full pressure of the rain.

Zoë pauses there on the doorstep, glancing back as she peels off her boots and stolen windbreaker. Her mother's garden has always been overwhelming. The majority is featured in the backyard, but the azaleas, spirea, and rosebushes crowding the balustrade are being battered. Since her mother's death, she and her cousin Hanna have been relegating the upkeep to Old Lady Sparks across the way. But the local librarian has been in a bad way this last month, illness getting the best of a weakened immune system. Thinking of it, she feels a pang of remembered grief. The old woman has been almost like a grandmother to the Zuko girls. It will be horrible to say goodbye.

Hearing the stern echo of her mother's voice in her head, scolding young Zoë over how easy it is to damage the dark oak of the hardwood floors inside, she unlaces the bodice of her drenched dress and strips out of the excessive garment. Left in leggings and a corset, she kicks the discards off the doormat and creeps into the foyer.

The house is asleep without any of the early risers left.

Hanna won't roll out of bed until noon. Her brothers, Bobbi and Sean, enjoy their sleepovers, so they're rarely around come sunrise. Her uncle will be up and heading for the marina first in an hour or so. Her aunt will be in the kitchen a little before then. And the sheriff's deputy, Kye Lovell, who has been renting a room since last October . . . well, he's usually the last to wander down. Then, of course, there's the roguish Caleb Westwick, who moved into the Zuko household when he got kicked out of his apartment across the cape, and doesn't normally go to bed until the sun starts shining.

Zoë can't quite explain why he's living with them, other than the fact that she had a major schoolgirl crush on the boy in high school, and it's left her with a soft spot. When he showed up on her doorstep with—supposedly—nowhere else to go, she couldn't turn him away. In the long run, though, it's been a good thing. Filling the house up this way has made the hole left in her family less noticeable.

Not to mention that having a bona fide werewolf hanging around can definitely come in handy.

It's been an increasingly wearisome week. The fatigue may be mental, but it doesn't make it any less effective. She wants a hot bath. She wants her bed. She wants to pilfer the refrigerator and satiate her growling stomach. Instead, she goes up the stairs, stops over in her bedroom to grab one of the robes that hang off the hook on her door, and then she heads directly for the attic.

Hidden in one of the twin bookshelves in one of the nooks is a very old codex, a leather-bound chronicle of the Zuko bloodline. Tucked in between the many grimoire volumes, it's safeguarded with a protection charm, keeping it out of the hands of outsiders. An ancient enchantment laid on the codex by the original Mother Sentinel ensures that the text is a Zuko's constant companion—advisor, compendium, and vanguard. It records all of Zoë's travels, dates her power's activities, keeps track of every change in the timeline, even when those changes result in others losing memory.

It's a way to prevent a butterfly effect from overtaking the Mother Sentinel's efforts. That sensitive dependence on initial conditions can be a real bitch to navigate.

After checking the codex to find out how saving the lawman affects the conditions around him, Zoë allows herself to meander through the well-worn pages. The initial incident is recorded, but the results are still blank, which tells her only what she suspected to begin with. This isn't over. Whatever their motives, the Order still intends to eliminate Marshal Givens, so the codex won't affix consequences yet.

Going farther back, she flips through the collections of her travels, all the jumps into the eighteenth century, that one instance in medieval Rome, tangling with the pirates in the Caribbean, befriending the Rat Pack in 1960s Vegas. She skims the eclectic compilation of stories, focusing on her own personal section of the codex, subconsciously seeking one obscure passage in particular.

The pages stop rustling at the very first of her entries, an impromptu trip to the Old West. It hits a part of her hard, same as always, and she finds herself sinking into the dusty settee for the long haul.

Zoë knows she's special. She knows she's gifted. But she's also cursed.

Her power has always been to surf the temporal stream of the universe. But once she'd been named Mother Sentinel, and inherited the duty, she lost some of her control over that ability. See, the power can pull her in whenever it needs to now—pull her in and let her out at nature's will. While she is displaced in time, she tries to make the best of it, correcting the misalignments that drag her there to keep the continuum intact. But she hadn't really understood what it meant to have this calling . . . until that first real voyage as Mother Sentinel.

It was an adventure that forced her to face the guidelines she had to accept in order to live this life—the rules, inevitabilities, and the hard truths. It was an experience she's not likely to ever forget, but not for the reasons her peers in the know would expect.

Before Zoë's tales in the codex are her mother's, and then _her_ mother's, and so on and so forth. Sometimes, it passes down to a niece rather than a daughter, but it's been nearly 5 generations since the last.

A boom of thunder rolls over the house just as the attic door creaks open and a familiar staccato of footsteps approach from behind her. Zoë doesn't even bother turning around, just says, "Morning, my dear Sensei."

"Looking a little haggard today, aren't you, Zo?" Weaver's voice is a lilted baritone with a heavy English accent. Hearing it soothes her nerves, an ingrained reflex, like a Pavlov's dog. "When did you get back?"

"Just now," she replies, attention undivided from the massive tome in her lap. "What are you doing here at such an unconventional hour? Don't tell me you've shacked up with Hanna again."

"If I had, it wouldn't be any of your business." The muscle-bound ex-Marine circles the settee, sizing his protégée up, before he collapses into a wicker armchair nearby and props his socked feet up on the ottoman between them. "I didn't know if you were coming back or not."

The abruptly somber note in his voice pulls Zoë's head up. A crease forms in her brow. She notes the baggy sweatpants, the gray _U of Maine_ shirt, the bedhead of curly blonde hair hanging lank to his shoulders, and knows he has indeed rekindled things with her bookworm of a cousin. She thinks she should be glad, but feels only apathy. "Didn't you?"

Weaver gives her this dead stare—his cop eyes. It's like he's looking right through her. Only he isn't. She knows that now; otherwise, he wouldn't be bombarding her with all of these wordless questions. They hang in the air between the two, weighing her down, making her want to flee. Finally, he tells her, "I reached out to the cortex like you asked, touched base with all the old contacts."

Zoë's spine goes rigid. She pulls forward in her seat, her entire being anxious with a reawakened _yearning_. "And?" she asks. "What have you come up with?"

But she sees the answer in his face before the words leave his mouth and she pulls back again, retreating inside the shell she's constructed, throwing her walls up. "No news of Isolde," he admits. "No word at all about the attack. But . . ."

"Yeah?" she murmurs, though her eyes have gone back to the codex.

The "incident" with Isolde and the Order in the Forgotten Catacombs is recorded, a few pages before the U.S. Marshal. Theoretically, it should be as easy as checking the shift log to find where the blast of power projected her. However, due to the extenuating circumstances, there was a misnomer and it fritzed on Isolde's unorthodox passage. In scrawling ink, the codex notes the error—and only the error. No location. Not even a broad estimation. Isolde could be anywhere—any place, any time.

Weaver doesn't need to remind her of this. "I stand by what I told you about locator spells. The whole reason Isolde made such a good Keeper for you is her unique background. The fact that she was supposed to have died in twelfth-century Ireland, and the anomalous way you saved her, added to her origin as a magical null—there's just no way to track her with magic. It won't even register her existence. She's still a void. I spoke with Henry and he agrees."

"Uh-huh."

"But," he continues, "I have heard talk floating around the cortex about a certain lost relic that might be able to help us."

That gets her attention. "Lost relic?"

He gives her a reluctant nod. "It's all conjecture."

Zoë arches an eyebrow, elbows planted on the opened tome. "Out with it."

"It's an artifact that was supposed to have been blessed by St. Anthony, patron saint of lost souls. Henry has all the mythology on the relic. Go ask him."

"But he thinks this could be useful?" she needles, a new sense of purpose sparking inside of her. "He thinks this artifact can locate Isolde?"

Weaver shrugs, conveying how little faith he holds in their friendly neighborhood sorcerer. "He thinks it might be possible, if he uses it right, and if you can unearth the damn thing."

"You said it's a lost relic," she recalls, sinking back against the stiff cushion. "Do we have any leads on where it might have gotten off to?"

"None," he says, lacing his hands behind his head. "That's your department."

"Don't remind me," she drawls, gives him a sour look, and turns down to her codex. She curls her legs underneath her, flips another of the parchment pages that crackle as they move, and smoothes a hand over the yellowed surface, almost reverently.

One page is full of scribbling, not the codex's work, but Zoë's personal addition to the entry. The opposite page is taken up with a charcoal sketching of a long-gone man, who still features after all this time in her dreams, especially on those lonely nights.

Dropping his feet to the floor, Weaver leans forward off his chair to peer at what's put that dreamy look in her eyes—a little bit of pleasure, a dash of sorrow, and a load of longing. "Oh, _brother_." He falls back into his seat, giving her an admonishing shake of his head. "Not again with that gunslinger. I thought you were past this?"

Without looking away from her sketch, Zoë tells him, "Losing people makes you start thinking about the rest."

That wipes the mockery from her mentor's expression. He's almost _respectful_ as he adds, "It does feel like we've gone through all of this a few too many times."

Zoë harrumphs softly, watching her fingertips trace the grooved etchings as her thoughts stray into potentially dangerous territory. "It's déjà vu, alright." Wonderment fills her, spills over a little. "How is it possible that the resemblance is so strong?"

Weaver looks stumped. "Come again?"

Drawing in a deep breath, Zoë heaves the codex closed and pushes to the edge of her seat. "There's this man I met last night. I'd swear he could be McHale's doppelganger."

That doesn't appear to appease Weaver's concern. "Sometimes, I _really_ worry. I don't like you going off, getting into all that trouble on your own, without anyone to keep you in touch with . . . well, what's real and what's not."

"It's all real, Weave." She rises to her feet, returns the codex to its rightful place, and spins to send him a flat look. "Just because _you_ can't reach it doesn't make it fantasy."

"Still . . ."

"BREAKFAST!" her aunt's voice rings out through the quiet house, a hollering announcement and an irrefutable command.

"Excellent," he crows, jumping at the chance to drop the subject he himself brought up. "I'm starved."

He's bouncing down the first tier of stairs when Zoë stops him. "I'm going away again," she says from the attic doorway. "There's something down in Kentucky I have to take care of." He rotates until he's looking up at her, disapproval shining from his hazel eyes that he'll never voice, because he knows that there are things he's not allowed to interfere with, and those same things are what he doesn't completely understand. "While I'm gone, can you concentrate on St. Anthony's relic? See what turns up."

A moment of tension passes.

At last, the older man nods his head, slowly, warily, and says, "Will do, Zo."

The two of them make the trek to the first floor in a silence that is nowhere near as easy as they're used to it being between them. It's not hostile, per se, just discomforting.

Down in the dining room, they walk in on a table overflowing with food. Bowls of fruit, platters of waffles, side dishes of bacon and sausage links, pitchers of OJ. And nearly all of the dining chairs are occupied. Everyone has come down, because everyone has heard that Zoë has come home.

It was a longer absence than usual, and fraught with an unspoken strain, due to Isolde's abrupt departure.

Zoë hesitates in the arched entryway from the parlor for a lasting moment, savoring the domestic chaos presented before her, because she knows there may not be another chance in a while, if ever. It's touching in a very calming way, this show of the ties that bind. She feels contentment stir inside of her, partial and fragmented as it may be. She knows she'll be taking this with her when she goes.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, it's a very long day for Raylan—one that often times seems unending.<p>

When that end does finally come, he finds himself slouched in his desk chair, peering with bleary eyes at a computer screen full of nonsensical text. The overhead fluorescents in the office have been shut off, all the rest of the desks in the bullpen abandoned hours earlier, and the blinds behind him are now slating moonlight instead of sunshine.

A newly-compiled file sits spread open on his desk. There's a lot of seemingly unimportant data piled in there. He doesn't even attempt to convince himself that's all there is to find. He already knows there's more than meets the eye to this one.

He's been assigned a new case this afternoon; he should be brushing up on _those_ specifics, not fact-finding on a mysterious warrior girl with a pristine record.

Zoë Eileen Zuko. Born to Kayla Zuko and Charles Keenan, she's an only child. Mother is deceased. Father has dropped off the map. She's 26 years old, birth date on the thirteenth of November, with no known employment history. She attended Meridian High School in Eden Falls, maintained a 3.9 GPA, and graduated from University of New England with a bachelor's degree, majored in quantum mechanics of all things. A real brainiac, this one is. She's never applied for a driver's license, never paid taxes, or been arrested. No history of violence.

A few articles in the local _Tribune_ feature her name during Zuko's teen years—odd occurrences, unexplainable accidents, stuff like that. Otherwise, she's kept a low profile.

Hat hooked on one knee, he's raking a hand through his overgrown hair when an alert pops up onscreen. The feed trace on her SIM card is linked. Last activation on the phone was in Maine, this morning. How the girl got from Eastern Kentucky to Northern Maine in the span of a few hours without any airline registration is just another question to add to the list of things he doesn't understand here. But her last known address is Eden Falls.

Maine? It's a big difference. And, he'd say, a fairly long way to go for a lousy drink.

"So, just _what_ was she doing in Harlan?"

With a heavy breath, Raylan tips his chair back, props his ankle on the corner of the desk, and strokes the pad of his thumb across his mouth in thought. His research efforts on the mystery girl from last night are extensive, but it's only left him with even more unanswered questions, and checking into the ninja chicks proves a complete waste of time. He can't puzzle out where they came from, or find any electronic trail indicating they were ever here in the first place.

Then again, he might have turned up something if he had even a morsel to go off of. Instead, he has to resort to filing through random bulletins for a sign. Unfortunately, the only signs he's finding are of how right the girl had been. For the sake of _not_ driving himself out of his mind with this, he'd be best to put the whole freakish night behind him. But that isn't going to happen. He recognizes the beginnings of an obsession, and a destructive one, at that. _If there's ever any other kind . . ._

And, _of course_, Winona chooses now to drop in on him.

He's so engrossed in one of the _Tribune_ articles—concerning a tsunami phenomenon that the girl and a "misfit clique" of friends were at the center of—that he doesn't even notice the _ding_ of the elevator or the distinct _click-clack_ of his ex-wife's heels as she stalks across the bullpen.

"Raylan," she calls, and he holds back a wince, because he knows that tone. She stops in front of his desk, arms crossed over her chest. Her dirty-blonde hair is upswept, errant wisps framing her face, and her typical pencil skirt and blouse have been replaced with a low-cut sweater dress. Her face is pinched with anger. "Where were you?"

All he can think is _Oh, shit_. He knows he's fucked up, somehow, but he's drawing a blank. "Winona," he greets with a drawling caution. "I suppose there's a reason you're looking particularly lovely this evening?"

She rolls her eyes at the compliment/question combo, unclenches her jaw. "You were supposed to take me to dinner. Remember, Raylan?" She utters his name like a jab to the solar plexus.

"Apparently not," he mutters, scrubbing a tired hand over his face. Leveling the desk chair, he glances around him, flips the new file closed with obvious regret written in his eyes. "Well, I guess I can wrap up here—"

"Just forget it, Raylan," she interjects, and shrugs his halfhearted offer off with restrained irritation. "Half the night's already gone and I've got to be up early for Judge Reardon's meeting with the visiting A.D.A."

A frown draws at his shadowed features. "You come all the way down here to tell me that?" he wonders.

"No." Her eyes widen, lips purse, brow rises. "I came down here to make sure you were standing me up for the reason I thought you were."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he catches his hat off his knee as he stands, drops it back onto his head, and tugs the brim down over his eyes. "And?"

"And you are," she retorts shortly. "I'm going home."

He's clearing off his desk, and opens his mouth to respond, but she's whirled around and is stalking right back out the door in a familiar huff, her chin jutted high like it does every time she's feeling self-righteous and pissed off. Raylan just shakes his head, lowers his hat another inch. All he wants is a bottle of bourbon and a soft bed, both of which are waiting for him back at his bungalow at the motel.

Once the desk is clear and the computer is shutdown, he takes the Zoë Zuko file and the stack on his new case, pins them under his arm, and locks up.

It's the middle of the night by the time he pulls into the motel. The air is balmy as hell and the bugs are biting. It's a brief walk to his door—but he finds himself detoured midway across the lot when he catches a glimpse of sun-kissed skin and inky waves out of the corner of his eye.

Veering onto the pavilion, he pauses at the corner, passes the prickly holly bushes to slant a shoulder against the peeling plaster of the building, and lets his gaze roll down to the nest of vending machines, where a short little thing wearing next to nothing is arguing with the ancient icemaker. He takes a second to absorb all that golden flesh, lean limbs, and generous curves. Dark tousles of hair sway halfway down her back. Green and yellow pinstripes decorate a pair of rumpled boxers, and an emerald cami hugs her torso like it's in love.

"Damn you!" she grumbles in a slurred voice. Not drunken, just sleepy. She's got a bucket cradled to her hip as she gives the machine a vehement kick with a bare foot. "Stupid, stubborn, piece of—"

That's when she gets the sticky sliding slab open with a heaving jerk, exhales her aggravated relief, and starts shoveling ice cubes into her bucket.

Raylan watches this transpire in a dreamlike daze. When she spins around, comes his way with her ice, he blinks at the drowsy heart-shaped face. He's trying to believe his eyes. He really is. But it's just so absurd.

That point is only highlighted when Zoë brushes past him without so much as a hitch in her step. She scratches at the back of her head, ruffling fingers through a thick mane of hair, and gives him a distracted "Hiya, cowboy."

He swivels in slow-motion, watching her progress across the pavilion and step up inside Room 3, just four rentals down from his own. The red-painted door swings closed, shutting him out. Still, he stands there, staring.

Inside the dingy motel room, Zoë collapses across the lumpy mattress, wrinkling her nose at the stench that seems to have permanently permeated the butt-ugly coverlet. After a few moments of dozing, she sets the bucket onto the pressboard nightstand and rolls onto her feet, padding into the adjoined bathroom for a clean washcloth. She uses it to slap together a makeshift icepack, switches out the light, flops onto her back above the covers, and plops the bundle of cubes to her forehead, throwing an arm over her face to trap it there.

It takes an excruciating while, but the cold finally does it's job, eases the brunt of Zoë's migraine. _Warnings_, Isolde would say, warnings that she's overusing her power, overextending herself. And at least the blinding pain isn't as debilitating as it once was; they come on so often that she's built up a tolerance.

She half expects the lawman to be banging down her door. But the noise never comes, and no one barges in, so Zoë lets herself sink into the welcoming darkness.

* * *

><p><em>TBC<em>


	3. where we dance in circles

III. _where we dance in circles . . ._

In the morning, Zoë clambers out of bed with a groan, stumbles her zombified self into a hot shower. Once she's aware and clothed appropriately, she sets off to find her wayward lawman.

She could sit back and wait for nature to warn her of the Order's next impending play for him. But passive isn't really her style. Besides, it would take too long. She needs to be focusing on the search for Isolde. To do that, she needs to take care of _this_. And sticking close to Marshal Givens is as good a way to go about that as any.

Out in the parking lot is the mud-crusted Silverado she obtained from a nice old man in Louisville the night before—the better to blend in and all that jazz. Lexington is 3 steps up from backwoods Harlan, which isn't exactly saying much, because it's still very much _Kentucky_, but she's relieved the marshal's laid stake here. Though it is about a two-hour drive from A to B, so she has to wonder just what he was doing in that bar in Harlan the other evening.

Daybreak here is . . . sticky. Too much humidity. Too much heat. If she were a regular New England girl, this would be killing her. But Zoë's got loads of experience with drastic climate changes. After all, half her time is spent in places dated pre-AC, plus those awful occasions in arctic locales—she doesn't like to think about those.

The marshal's sedan is still parked in front of his door. The curtains are pulled over the window to his room. It's dark inside. Good. That gives her some time. Leaving the truck where it is, she shifts through space, brings herself into a cluttered bookshop on Laurel Avenue.

The front door is locked up, closed sign hanging in the window, and the lights are all out. Carefully, she picks her way through the cramped stacks, slides behind the owner's counter, and finds the alcove into the stairwell that leads up to the apartment on the second floor. It takes about five straight minutes of knocking before she hears the muffled cursing as someone shuffles to the door.

"_What_?" a hard voice rasps before it swings open and a craggy face appears in the revealed wedge. Flinty eyes squint through an oval pair of bifocals. "Zuko? Is that you?"

"The one and only," she replies, burying her hands in the pockets of her russet leather jacket. It's a light layer, still too much for Kentucky weather right now, but she won't take it off. It's the principle of the matter. "I need some supplies."

"You dragged me out of bed to restock your vanity charms?" he growls. "Get lost."

Before the door can slam in her face, Zoë slaps a hand to the center. "Come on, Henry. You know I don't use those rip-offs. And I don't have long. This is important." She sees he's not impressed. "I'll pay full price." He harrumphs. "I'll add interest." A few seconds of deliberation stretch on.

"Get your scrawny fanny in here then," he grouses at last, heavy on the begrudging reluctance. The old man creaks around and leaves the door ajar. "What do you need?"

Pulling a crumpled notepad from her pocket, Zoë follows him into the musty apartment. "I've got a shopping list." And her ass is _so_ not scrawny.

* * *

><p>Saul's is the cleanest eatery on the block with the greasiest food. In a booth on the east side of the diner, Raylan is only just digging into his eggs and grits when a brightly-colored blur plops down into the opposite bench. He looks up from the open file propped in his hand slowly, like looking over your shoulder in a horror movie, 'cause he just <em>knows<em> who has appeared out of nowhere.

The girl's dark hair is twisted up into a high ponytail, eyes like sapphires in the bright sunlight, and there's a peculiarly cheery smile shining across the tabletop at him. "Good morning, marshal." Her dulcet voice is lilted with irony. "Busy day ahead of you?"

Raylan curls his hand, snapping the file shut. There's a wariness she brings about that doesn't sit well with him. "No more so than usual."

Winging an eyebrow in acknowledgement, she reaches across the table and snatches a strip of bacon off his plate. As she's crunching on it, she says, "I'd kill for a cup of coffee." And when his gaze flickers automatically down to his own mug, she adds, "I meant _real_ coffee."

He frowns. "This is real coffee."

A wry twist to her lips taunts him as she arches up to peer into his mug. "It's black. And I bet it's something generic like Maxwell's House that's been burnt."

He finds himself pushing it towards her, one arm hooked over the back of the booth. "It's not burnt," he says. "And I can't believe I'm having this conversation."

"The last decent java I had was a roasted blend from Peru," she counters, elbows on the table. "I'm very particular." She steals another strip of bacon. "And what's so unbelievable about a conversation on coffee? I'd say it's fairly tame."

Taking in a deep breath, Raylan just gives the bewildering girl a shake of his head. He unfurls his legs under the table, lets them stretch over onto her side of the booth. "So what did you do with your abductee?"

"Nothing," she replies, casting her eyes down. Her fingers latch onto the handle of his mug and, after taking a swift gulp, she makes a face of distaste. Catching his _look_, she shrugs. "What? I do need the caffeine."

"What do you mean _nothing_?"

"It's exactly how it sounds. I did nothing with her. She escaped before I had the chance. And don't go spreading that around."

"Who would I tell?" he asks, absentmindedly, as he's swatting her quick little hand away from his plate before she has the chance to pick it clean.

The girl pulls back, an impish grin curving at her glossed lips. Watching him closely, she slouches lower in the bench, and rests her palms on the table, fingers tapping delicately. There's an unnerving glint in those bright eyes when she tips her head to the side and asks him, "So. How did your boss react to that incident report?"

Raylan's brow goes up at her teasing. "I didn't write one."

"No?" She feigns shock. "That's awfully irresponsible of you, marshal."

Even as irritation and suspicion begin to override the surreal wonder, his lips twitch at her airy charm. He straightens out of his lazy posture, leans forward, getting serious. "Is there a point to this little game you're playing, Miss Zuko?"

She just keeps smiling at him, thoroughly at ease. "I'm not playing games with you, sugar. I apologize if that's how I've made you feel. I just wanted to check in, make sure you haven't had any more problems with those hunters."

He sits back again, his frustration ebbing imperceptibly. "Hunters," he echoes, his voice flat, verging on skeptical disbelief. "That the ladies from outside the tavern?"

The girl nods her head, just once, and starts thumping her fingertips against the tabletop like she's playing piano. Watching the rhythm, he thinks she just might be. "Glorified guns for hire, only without the guns."

"Right," he shoots back. "Now I suppose you're going to tell me that you weren't the one they were gunning for."

"I thought that was implied," she counters with another careless shrug of her shoulder, while she's slanting for his food again. "Don't stress. You won't have to worry about them for long."

Raylan dips his head, watches her closely from under the brim of his hat. "Because you're going to handle it?" he suggests, humoring more than patronizing. She's about to steal his last piece of bacon when he catches her at the wrist. Something like static electricity jumps from her skin to his, spindles through his fingers, up his arm. He ignores it. "Get your own."

"Don't mind if I do," she parries, sending him an arch look, and slips her hand from his to flag down the raggedy waitress. "How're the pancakes?"

"I don't know," he says, feeling a bit stupefied by this entire encounter. "What was that you were saying about an assassination situation?"

"Just that it's being taken care of," she answers, not missing a beat. "Forget about it."

He feels his features drawing into an incredulous expression. "Is that all you—"

But the waitress finally makes it over to their booth, and the girl preoccupies herself with scanning the menu, listing a ridiculous amount of mismatched items. Her oblivious attitude is really beginning to bug him. No, it's been bothering him all along. He's about had enough. And he's wondering seriously how forthcoming she would be should she end up locked in the trunk of his car.

"So," she begins as soon as the waitress walks away. "Tell me, honestly, how's your day look from here?"

Raylan lets his gaze roll down the visible length of her before returning to meet her sparkling sapphire stare. "I'm escorting a witness to the Syracuse office," he tells her, though he has no idea why.

"That's a nine-hour drive, roughly."

"I'm aware."

"When?" she wants to know, folding her forearms on the edge of the table.

"Soon." Interest sparks in his expression as he watches her turn thoughtful, her attention drifting out the plate-glass window beside them. "What are you doing here?"

"I was hungry," she retorts, gaze unwavering. "Still am."

Raylan's head cants, a small knowing smirk taking shape, even as his stare narrows. "That's not what I meant."

It is a few seconds before she drags her attention back onto him. When she does, though, there is a moment where something akin to awareness arcs between the two, an almost tangible ribbon of connection. It passes quickly, leaving him even more confused, and her answering smile widens at the way he's studying her.

When the girl stays silent, he moves on. "Who are they?"

"I told you—hired guns."

"Not like any mercs I've ever met," he counters.

Zoë shrugs, unconcerned. "It's a cultish thing."

"Alright," he concedes, because he knows that's all she'll give. "Who sent 'em?"

"That's . . . complicated."

Raylan isn't impressed. "_Un_complicate it."

"It's not so easy," she argues, slanting away. "Are you always this dogged?"

He levels her with a dangerous look, drawling, "I think I've been unjustifiably accommodating so far."

"Granted," she retorts, and suddenly deflates, sinking deeper in her side of the booth. That buoyant disposition dampens, as if her mask slips, and he glimpses something more despondent than playful. "I'm doing the best I can, cowboy."

"Maybe so, but you're not—" He's in the middle of a word when he falters, because he's blinked, and something's changed. He must have zoned out. That has to be it. Suddenly, his assignment file is gone from the bench beside him. It's in her hands, and she's got her head bent over the paperwork, scanning through it. Jaw slack, he blinks again, carefully, confoundedly. "How did you do that?"

"Hmm?" she responds, distracted, without picking her head up.

He could persist, but he isn't quite sure _how to_, so he just shakes his head, settles for reaching across the table and snatching the file from her grasp. At the girl's affronted look, he holds up a finger and warns, "Don't make me cuff you."

For a nanosecond, she looks like she's going to argue. Instead, she rolls her eyes and flops back against the bench with a not-so-coy "Kinky—I like it."

His voice comes out only mildly exasperated, "Miss Zuko."

"Zoë, _please_." She sends him a crooked grin, and it is altogether too mischievously wicked for Raylan's comfort. "Miss Zuko is my aunt."

He opens his mouth, no idea how he's going to deal with this unbroken circuit they've got going on, and is fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your perspective—preempted by the waitress's arrival. She sets her cluttered tray on the edge of their table and starts depositing plates of various foods across the width of Zoë's side.

"Thanks a ton, hon," she murmurs as the older woman leaves them again. He watches her catch her lower lip between her teeth as she scans the assortment with indecision. At last, she thumbs a platter of French fries forward, pops one in her mouth. Then her eyes go up to lock onto his. "So, your witness's name is Avery Bryce, huh?"

Raylan's amused expression tightens into a frown. He doesn't say a word.

"You know, I went to high school with an Avery Bryce."

"Is that so?"

"It is," she insists, chewing on another fry. "Sheriff's kid, and a real vindictive sort of troublemaker, if you know what I mean. But he cut out of town after graduation. I always wondered what happened to him. Last I heard, he was rubbing elbows with one of the Boston street gangs. Good riddance, I say."

Raylan doesn't like this new development, not at all. She's already got him mixed up enough as it is without adding on more. "You're suggesting that this is the same guy?"

She glances up at him, her fork cutting into a rolled crêpe, projecting a perfectly blasé expression. "I'm not suggesting anything—though I am wondering. Why? What does it matter?"

"You tell me."

"Would if I could," she drawls, right before she takes a long sip of her smoothie. "It's probably just a coincidence." But the wry way she says this lets him know that she doesn't believe in coincidences.

Silence lapses between them then, and it continues while they each finish their respective meals, an easy sort of quiet, though it's filled with everything left unspoken.

When she starts to slide from the booth, Raylan darts out a hand and catches her by the arm, halting her halfway to standing. "Not so fast, Miss Zuko."

"_Zoë_," she reminds him, but sinks back into the booth, regardless. "And I would have thought you'd have to be going."

In low-rider jeans and an emerald halter top, she looks normal. _Good_, yes, but also completely normal, rather than the Middle Earth extra from the first night he saw her.

He pins her down with a piercing look of intent. "If you're being truthful with me about the mercs—"

"I am," she cuts in, chin lifted. "Like I said, I'm a lousy liar. When I can't tell the truth, I don't say anything at all on the matter . . . mostly."

He dips his head in acceptance of that tidbit. "So how is it _you're_ involved?"

"Again, it's complicated. And not something I can get into right now."

"Not right now as in _later_?" he queries. "You have to give me something."

"Well," she begins, ever so hesitantly, "I believe you do know where to find me."

Raylan's hand is still gripping her arm over the table, long fingers curled softly in the leather of her jacket's sleeve. He cants his head to the side, hat tilting with it, and peers into the girl's startling eyes until he's absolutely certain she's sincere.

"Alright then," he murmurs, pulling his hand back to himself. He rises to his feet, digs out the wallet from his back pocket, and drops a suitable amount of wrinkled cash onto the tabletop. Catching her gaze again as she looks up at him from her seat, Raylan makes a slight hat-tipping motion before he turns and walks out, pausing with the open door in his hand to glance back over his shoulder.

* * *

><p>Zoë hates having to mislead the man. There's no way she can explain any of this to him, not properly, without revealing her secret, which she can't do. But she needs his attitude towards her to be at least relatively cooperative. For that to continue, she has to give him something to work—i.e. nonaggressively—for. So it has to be done.<p>

She gives him a decent head start before she follows, and waits until he's deep inside the federal building to meander her way through the parking lot to his sedan. There's a locator charm in her bag from Henry's, a coarse satchel of redwood and such about the size of her fist, encased in sticky silk. When the coast is clear of passersby, she drops nonchalantly into a crouch by one of the rear tires and pins the charm to the underside of the wheel well. It takes all of two seconds before she's strolling away. Anyone glancing out of a window from the building shouldn't have noticed.

Half an hour later, she's curled up behind the wheel of the Silverado, a worn paperback propped against her knee. Her phone vibrates from the pocket of her jacket, which is folded on the passenger seat, buzzing. Dragging herself back to reality, she flips it open and reads the alert message delivered. Henry's charm is motion-activated. So it appears that the marshal is on the move, at last.

Leaving the cell open, she sets it on the dashboard and goes back to her novel. When a suitable amount of time has passed, and the lawman's got enough miles on her, Zoë tosses her book into the glove compartment, turns the big engine over, and swerves out onto the road.

She's not used to driving a stick shift, and she's not used to the noisy exhaust pipes, or the hefty horsepower, but she manages to get by.

_This truck is definitely overcompensating_, she thinks. But in this state, it makes her much less noticeable than a shiny Nissan.

Zoë uses the receiver algorithm Henry designed to work synergistically with the tracking magic, and keeps on the marshal's tail, hanging back enough to be unobtrusive, but close enough to be aware. She's trying to avoid being sighted as best she can. And she almost makes it. _Almost_.

They're just hitting the borderline of New York when she catches up to the marshal and his fare. He's stopped to refuel at a rural station that looks straight out of a Stephen King movie. _Desolate_ is the word. Parked across the street, she can make out a fuzzy but vaguely familiar man sprawled in the backseat.

The sun's been down for an hour or so, and it's already pitched darkness, despite the starry sky. Jamestown is as good a place as any to stopover, rest the night, and she _really_ wishes that's what he's intending to do, wishes he'd finish the drive in the morning, but knows there's not a chance of it. Nightfall is dangerous, especially this kind, _especially_ when you have a target on your back as the good marshal does.

"This could get messy," she murmurs to herself, climbing quietly out of the muddy pickup. She pulls one of the sheathed daggers from her bag, resting on the seat, and slides the blade into her waistband at the small of her back. The other gets shoved into her boot. Call it witch's intuition—hell, call it old-fashioned woman's—but she's certain there's something nasty out there, lurking. She's also concerned with keeping out of the marshal's sight. More importantly, she can't let his passenger see her here.

All she told Raylan about Avery Bryce this morning is true. She went to high school with Sheriff Bryce's boy. They weren't friends, not even close. He had an inner nature that was far too vindictive for her to bear. What she left out this morning is the fact that Avery Bryce is one of many Eden Falls denizens who knows the Zuko family secret. Specifically, he knows about Zoë. And, before he blew out of town looking for bigger and better schemes, he'd dedicated a fair amount of energy to ruining Zoë's life.

It's been years since she's even heard his name. But she's got a feeling that he would still jump at the chance to cause trouble for her, if it's convenient. All because she refused to take him into the past in order to save his deceased mother from a car accident, sophomore year. It was a difficult moment, and she understood his rage, but that doesn't change impossibilities. To save Mrs. Bryce would have been to sacrifice the integrity of the continuum, which could have likely been catastrophic, thinking of every little disturbance her simple continued existence would have created. Thousands and thousands of little inconsistencies . . .

In the shadows of the woods that encroach I-86, Zoë unhooks the azure talisman from around her neck. Holding it up by the chain, she whispers a few words of remembered Latin and the nightshade pendent illuminates with an inner moonglow that scatters the thickest of the darkness. Directing it towards the line of trees, she hears a low hiss resonate from the underbrush.

Breathless, she takes a few steps closer, holding the nightshade up in front of her like an ethereal torch to guide her way. Sure enough, as soon as the glow of the pendent sways over the unrest, a rangy four-legged creature leaps out.

Claws rake through empty air; she's already danced out of range. She's drawn a dagger, but doesn't lash out, because she's clutching the invoked talisman. The beams of the nightshade hit the beast before it can lunge for her jugular, sizzling across the flesh of his spine, and he howls out an ungodly sound before blurring back into the shroud of the woods.

"Dammit!" she curses, vehemence pumping her heart faster. She starts into the trees, nightshade lowering, but stops at the very edge to glance behind her at the old station.

She hadn't thought the Order would send out a tracker so soon. Those creatures are vicious, lethal, and almost never miss their prey. Once they have a scent, they don't stop coming until they've gotten their kill. For that very reason, the cost to sic one is high, both in power and currency. She has to assume that means they are running on a tight deadline—which is both _good_ and _bad_ for Zoë.

She needs to take this one out before it has a chance to circle back. But it could just as easily be a lure, so she'll have to wait. Unfortunately, it means she needs to keep close to the lawman. Too close to be incognito under a trained eye. Not that it makes a difference. That tracker's outcry was _loud_. There won't be any avoiding a run-in now.

* * *

><p>Raylan is only just striding out of the shack of a station when he hears the strangled shriek that reverberates through the air, chasing all the birds out of their perches in the treetops. His hand is at his hip before he fully registers the oddity of the noise, drawing the Glock from his holster. Holding the weapon at his thigh, he rounds the sedan, raps his knuckles on the rear window.<p>

Bryce pops his door open with a clouded look, nods towards the other side of the interstate, where an alcove of weeds and wild thicket stretch before the ditch that leads into the woods.

"Stay put," he tells the kid, then smacks the door shut again. He's crossing the road and venturing into the clinging thicket at as brisk a pace as he can risk without being careless. What he finds really shouldn't surprise him. "Zuko."

The girl has her back held to him as he approaches, her gaze fixated on an indistinct point in the darkness ahead. When he calls her name, he sees her stiffen. She rotates to face him, plastering on a sheepish smirk over the paled disquiet he recognizes.

Raylan's eyes draw to the eerie glow emanating from her left hand. Not that he can miss the glint of the dagger in her right. She realizes his divided attention and immediately draws the chain dangling from her closed fist behind her leg.

"_Extinguish_," he thinks she utters swiftly under her breath, only it doesn't sound right. It sounds more like, "_Exitus_." Either way, her glow abates as if it were never there. When his gaze scrolls up and locks on hers, she licks her lips. "Hey there, cowboy. How's it going?"

He ignores the spark she's trying to ingratiate herself to him with. Telling to him is the way she holds the hilt of her dagger, lax at her side, but still available. He isn't comfortable enough to holster his Glock. "What is it you're after _this_ time?"

Zoë glances down at his weapon, specifically his index finger, notes how it's stretched along the barrel rather than curled around the trigger guard, and her smirk relaxes into a lazy smile. Cocking an eyebrow at him, she flips her dagger around and sheathes it at the small of her back. "Oh, you know . . . just keeping an eye out."

Raylan's keen stare flickers towards the woods. "See anything interesting?"

The girl's face goes unreadable, which in and of itself tells him enough. "Not so far."

"Zoë," he says on a wearily exasperated sigh, but that's as far as he gets, because she reaches up to start fastening her necklace back into place and heads for an old Chevy parked along the ditch.

"Oh, my," she quips, making a lackluster show of glancing at the dainty watch on her wrist. She spins around, keeps walking backward for the truck. "Is that the time? I _really_ oughta be going now."

"Zoë Zuko," he calls after her, his voice edged but mellow. He waits until she focuses on him before adding, "You and I aren't finished." Meaning he's going to get a full explanation out of her, front to back, whether she likes it or not. And if she tries to run, he'll hunt her down.

"Unfinished business," she says lightly, climbing up into the driver's side of the Chevy. "Got it."

Still cradling his Glock, Raylan watches as the Chevrolet pulls out onto the pavement and veers around the bend in the road, taillights cutting out. Withdrawn, he angles his body to head back to the sedan, after a final assessment of the menacing abyss beyond that shadowed line of trees.

It's just another question to add to the ever growing list for that riddle of a girl.

"Was that who I think it was?" the kid asks as soon as Raylan slides behind the wheel. He's leaning forward between the bucket seats, hands white-knuckling the passenger side headrest.

"Depends," the marshal replies. He turns the key, listens to the engine catch, and swerves back into motion, trying to put the whole perplexing issue out of mind for the moment. But the kid looks agitated, which makes him even more suspicious, which rules out any chance of not obsessing over this for the remaining 200 miles of their trip.

"Man, it's been forever since I've seen that bitch," Bryce comments, mostly to himself, and sinks into the backseat again, seemingly resolving his feelings. His expression bleeds from the initial shock into something sinister, convoluted, and _pleased_. Or maybe _satisfied_ is a better word for the gleam in his green eyes.

Raylan keeps silent, his eyes on the road, his features impassive.

The kid in the backseat rakes a hand through his bleached rock star locks. He radiates a smug slyness as he lounges across the length of the bench seat and gazes out the window. In a calculatedly casual tone, he says, "Did you know that the Zuko clan was the very first refugees from Essex in January, 1692—seventeen days before the Salem witch trials began?"

The marshal glances at the rearview mirror, still outwardly impassive, though his mind is reeling. "Can't say I did."

Encouraged, Bryce continues, "Then, when the mass hysteria spread, it was Zukos that instigated a major resistance, smuggling the persecuted out of the hot zone."

Raylan absorbs the plain facts, assuming they're accurate, but gets hung up on the main concept. Contemplative, he murmurs, "Witches . . ."

The kid's smirk widens. "Reportedly, nearly half of the Ipswich coven survived because of the efforts of a Zuko. A lot of those survivors ended up settling in Northern Maine, you know. To be specific, my hometown of Eden Falls—Zoë's, too."

Silence descends for the rest of the ride. He gets what the kid is insinuating. Really, he does. He just doesn't know what to make of it.

* * *

><p><em>TBC<em>


	4. afraid of losing grace

IV. _afraid of losing grace . . ._

The next night, Zoë finds herself slumped on another barstool. Only this one's an upgrade. She's in Lexington, still, and this pub is halfway decent. It's clean, at least, which is more than she can say about the last one. She's played a few rounds of pool, fended off tactless advances, and given up all pretenses of why she's come here. See, her only intention this evening is to get properly intoxicated. None of this buzzed bullshit. She's not leaving until she's falling-down drunk. And in the morning, she'll chide herself for being so irresponsible when she's supposed to be on her guard. But for now, she figures she's got a quiet night to get wasted, because the lawman dropped Avery Bryce off at the Syracuse office, safe and sound, she handled the tracker, and there hasn't been a suspicious sign since.

Obviously, a window of opportunity for the Order has now closed, which means she can probably go home. Not that she's rushing it. Equal mixtures of procrastination and thoroughness will have her sticking around another day or so to be positively certain. After that, if she's wrong and they're objective is still on target, her power should pull her back to the next disturbance. Either way, another diversion has come and gone.

The truth of the matter is that she just doesn't want to go back to her life. Well, technically, _this_ is her life. But the present has always weighed on her terribly. Now, without Isolde, she's treading water again, barely able to keep her head above surface.

Weaver called this morning—ostensibly with word of St. Anthony's relic—then fed her a well-worded speech about how slim the chance of this new lead working out is, how she can't get her hopes up, and she can't fixate on this _one_ thing, because it probably won't pan out. Like she really needs to hear that, right? She knows. She knows better than anyone. If the family history is taken into light, she knows how this will end. As everything else for her does . . .

* * *

><p><em>The pain was excruciating, a white-hot web of scalding sensory assault. Balance inverted and she hit the ground on her back. Air whooshed from her lungs like a punch to the gut. Shaking hands fumbled for her abdomen, burying in the blood that flooded from the wound there. Head tipped up against the gritty stone beneath her, she choked, struggling to remember how to inhale. It wasn't working.<em>

_"Hold on, Zo." A lilting voice penetrated the haze, spurred her back to awareness beyond the blinding condition of her own body. Just in time to absorb the jolt of an aftershock, too. Lights and shadows danced in her vision. A slender form thrust on top of her then, huddling over her, and created a shield from the falling chunks of crumbled stone. "The rocks are sliding again," that melodious voice told her. "Just breathe, Zo. It's almost settled."_

_"I . . . I . . ." Breathing was like trying to wade through molasses doing the butterfly stroke. Impossible. Exhausting. Still, she kept trying, fighting through the failing of her own body. "I can't . . . shift."_

_When the cave went quiet, Isolde pulled up. The front of her burgundy outfit was drenched, but it was nothing compared to the startling sight of Zoë's blouse, which had once been pure white. "Yes, you can." The dark-haired girl started to turn her head, denying, and she repeated firmly, "You can."_

_Layers of golden hair fell over her shoulders, dragging through wet blood, as she replaced Zoë's quivering hold on her stab wound. Feeling her pulse go increasingly weak, Isolde took to glancing desperately at the caved-in catacombs around them. There was no way out. She'd already scoured the burrow. Trying to dig through the collapse would only cause another rockslide. And the Mother Sentinel didn't have that kind of time, anyway._

_"We should have never descended the Forgotten Catacombs on our own," she muttered regretfully, only to turn to a gasping Zoë and send her a reprimanding look. "I told you so."_

_The other woman heaved a broken sob of laughter, screwing her eyes shut. "That you did." It was getting easier to speak, because all she had left were breaths too shallow for the building blood in her trachea. "Tell me you've got a way out of here . . ."_

_"If I did, we'd still have to make it past the remnants of the Order's ambush."_

_"Piece of cake," Zoë quipped, one corner of her mouth upturned wryly. Another wave of pain swept her under and she pressed her face against the jagged surface of the stone, grimacing. "Issy—"_

_"Don't," the blonde interrupted sternly. Laced hands strengthened the pressure to the sucking wound. "You have enough energy reserved to get home."_

_"No," Zoë protested, having to drag the words out. "No, I don't. Not for both of us."_

_"I never said anything about the both of us."_

_Zoë ignored her. "I only have enough left to push one of us through space. And to get home . . ." Her head fell back again, frame slumping with the simple but taxing exertion of resisting the lure of the undertow. "It's a long ways, Is."_

_"You'll make it," she countered. There was no quaver in her voice, no weakness in her expression, but her emerald Irish eyes seared into a distracted Zoë with all the vulnerability hidden in those depths. Fear. Worry. Sadness. Resignation. "Shift yourself straight to the healer."_

_"I'm not . . . leaving you."_

_"Hello?" Isolde snapped. "I'm not the one dying here! There's got to be enough oxygen in this burrow to last me at least seven hours without you hogging it all."_

_"What if I can't get back here?" Zoë challenged, a stubborn expression set to her pained features. "What if I can't find the right one? What if the rest of the cave comes down? What if the Sirens . . . blast through . . . and you're outnumbered?"_

_"We're always outnumbered."_

_"Yes, we are. But I can always pull us out. You can't shift away before they kill you."_

_"It doesn't matter, Zo. Think about this rationally. You're fading fast. If you can't afford to take me with you now, there will be another chance once you've gotten help."_

_The words made sense, even to Zoë's addled mind, but she was looking into her best friend's eyes, and those eyes were saying something totally different. They were saying that Isolde didn't believe any of it. Isolde was convinced she wasn't getting out of here. And she had a good point._

_"If I can't afford . . . to take you with me," she echoed, her voice gone unnaturally soft, breathy, almost hollow. "What if I can, then?"_

_"You just said—"_

_"I know what I said." Cringing, Zoë jerked up a trembling hand and latched onto Isolde's over her stomach, their bloodied extremities conjoining fiercely, making for a macabre sight._

_The very second Isolde felt that telltale tingling spindle up her arm, slithering towards her heart, she tried to yank herself out of the other woman's grasp. Zoë clutched the blonde's wrist with her other hand and held on for dear life. "Don't try. You don't have it in you."_

_"Well, I'm not leaving you behind . . . and you know it," she rasped, body beginning to quake and seize. "So either we go together, and take our chances, or we stay."_

_Isolde hovered anxiously over her, face of deceptively-delicate beauty cast with grim acceptance. "This won't work."_

_Because she couldn't rightly disagree, Zoë stayed silent, concentrated on breaking safely through the stream while she was already so depleted. Head thrown back, she rode the wrenching waves of power, found them fluctuating erratically without her steady hand of control to guide it._

_The disruption was supposed to be a gentle fissure. That was how her abilities worked, sliding her and her passenger into the stream and out at corresponding vectors without altering the natural state. Instead, she was blundering her way through, causing a dangerous rupture rather than the unobtrusive chasm it was meant for._

_Overtaken with the struggle of manipulating something so wild, Zoë hardly noticed the explosion that blew through the cave-in, pelting the women with sharp debris and shaking the entire catacomb. The whole place was about to come down around them._

_Urgency rippled through her, surging her through the rest of the tumultuous task, which was the worst mistake she could ever make._

_Summoning all of what she had left, Zoë sparked a "big bang" of sorts, overloading both herself and the stream. A release of undiluted energy smashed into the girls, searing their eyes blind with the unfiltered brightness of it, and thrust them apart. The power catapulted her—and Isolde, she thinks—into nonnavigable subspace._

_After tearing through her consciousness, rendering her virtually defenseless, she was forcibly expelled—none too nicely, either—and deposited only God knew where. But she wasn't aware of the journey or the departure; the next thing she knew from the overload was waking up on a creaky old hospital cot, bandaged and half dead. As it turned out, she'd landed in prohibition era Chicago. And she was still too weak to shift home. So all she could do was lie there. Helpless. Trapped. Going out of her mind._

_A week later, her energy was recharged enough to go home. Screwing her eyes shut and breathing deep, she shifted herself directly to the Harper residence in Eden Falls. From the blast, her nerves were still a bit charred, so it wasn't exactly a pleasant trip._

_Zoë found herself sprawled on the floor of a widespread kitchen, where Judy Harper stood, local nurse and homegrown hereditary witch. The middle-aged woman was amidst an argument with the significantly younger man that faced her from across the island countertop between them when she noticed their unexpected visitor's arrival._

_Sweeping forward, Judy dropped to her knees beside a pale Zoë and ran her hands over the girl's pitiful form. "My God, Zuko. What have you done to yourself now?"_

_"Got stabbed," she managed to croak out. That shift had really taken it out of her. "Fix me up, will ya?"_

_The older woman worked her healing hands over Zoë, worked her magic, until Zoë was strong enough to be on her feet. Then she went home. That wasn't what she wanted to do. She wanted to return straight to the catacombs, wanted to pick up her friend's trail, badly. But it had been so long already since she'd been separated from Isolde, and she still wasn't up for another big shift again, so she went home._

_It wasn't until she checked the codex that she realized . . . well, let's just say that reality began to sink in._

* * *

><p>Knocking back shots at the bar, Zoë sees the look in Isolde's eyes right before the blast. That grim certainty, saying she knows how wrong it's going to go, yet she's going to trust Zoë, despite it. That can't be the last time she ever sees her best friend. It just can't. Worst of all is the knowing that Isolde was right. If she had only gone on without her, she might have made it to Judy Harper, might have been healed, and just might have been able to get back to collect the Irishwoman before her oxygen ran out. Instead, she let herself be ruled by her emotions, and lost Isolde because of it.<p>

She only hopes that, wherever her Keeper is, she's safe.

Sliding her empty tumbler across the bar, Zoë expels all of that maudlin energy with a sharp sigh and lilts her voice into playful tones as she calls, "Pour me another, Jeeves."

A raucous cluster congregated around the billiards alcove lets out a chorus of jeers a moment later, 8-ball squarely in a corner pocket and game won. She can vaguely see the activity going on in her periphery, but doesn't bother turning to watch them settle bets and bluster about cheaters and doubling down, because showing interest will only bring her another batch of filth-covered moths to swat away.

Except, apparently, it makes no difference whether she's got her not-in-the-mood façade on or not.

A pair of cute country boys wanders over to her end of the bar as soon as the next round of pool gets going. The scruffy one with a backwards baseball cap sets a pitcher onto the bar and signals for a refill of beer. But his buddy in flannel with the spiked ditchwater hair and tawny complexion zeroes in on her without a second's delay.

Of course, everyone around here has tawny complexions. She'd be hard-pressed to find a pallid soul within a thousand miles of this place.

"Samuel," he announces, slanting an elbow against the bar beside her perch, a cocky grin on his mouth. "This here's Jimbo."

"Evenin'," his friend puts in with a perfunctory tip of his imaginary hat.

Running her tongue across the seam of her lips, Zoë turns to look at him under hooded lashes, her movements markedly slow. He's waiting for her half of the introductions. It takes him a minute to realize he's not going to get it.

"Not much of a talker, eh?"

"On the contrary," she quips, swinging so abruptly from standoffish to saucy that it makes him blink, and he doesn't pick up on the undertone of sarcasm. "When I have something to say, you can't get me to shut up."

"Oh, forgive me, ma'am. I didn't realize your name was such a controversial topic."

Zoë quirks a wry smile, tipping her glass to her lips. Because she doesn't like to think of herself as a _total_ bitch, she doesn't point out the inaccuracy of the boy's attempt at wit. Instead, she downs another dose of whiskey so cheap that it burns all the way down, bumps the glass against the bartop, and spins her stool around. "Sorry, pretty boy. I'm not much for company tonight."

Samuel isn't so easily deterred, though. Adopting a friendly demeanor that is genial, endearing, even a bit self-deprecating, he drops himself into the barstool next to hers when his friend takes the refilled pitcher and ambles back to the pool table. "Or maybe you just don't know how lonely you've been."

"Trust me," she tells him, her shuttered gaze roaming over her surroundings with a lazy perusal. "When I want to entertain myself, I know who to go to." She's got her elbows propped on the edge behind her and is slouched kind of provocatively in her seat, sending all sorts of mixed signals. But the way she's ignoring him should be clear enough. "And it ain't a stranger in a bar from Lexington, Kentucky."

Samuel swallows past the beginnings of a lump in his throat, uncomfortable but not yet willing to walk away. "Why's that?" he asks, and gets her to rotate his way.

Zoë gives him a long look, head tilted, brow winged, before she says, "The answer wouldn't make any sense to you."

"Try me."

A smile curves her mouth in a faint display of amusement. "I'd rather not."

A beat of stiff silence envelops them, one she does nothing to discourage, and Samuel fidgets in his stool, floundering. Finally, he squares his shoulders, tries to be endearing again, drawling, "You wouldn't happen to have a map on hand—would you, darlin'?"

Only, she isn't exactly endeared. In fact, she's feeling downright pestered by now. "Why?" she counters, utterly deadpan. "Are you getting lost in my eyes?"

The country boy falters, struggles valiantly to forge ahead, but she ultimately stares him down. She's left with her dirty glass, her cheap whiskey, and an itching urge to get the hell out of this dive.

Watching the hapless hick retreat, his talk of loneliness echoes in her head, and Zoë drunkenly recalls a collection of last moments—her father walking out the door without a goodbye; her mother narrowly making it home after a job gone wrong, just to bleed out on the parlor floor before the healer could arrive; her first genuine love being left behind in a time she could never return to; countless friends and acquaintances.

Put succinctly, her life _sucks_. More than most, even, which is saying something. Wallowing in this fact will get her nowhere, though. She needs to shake it off. She can't stand sad drunks. She never used to be one. Now . . . well, she's on the verge. And that just will not do. No, it won't.

Feeling all the liquor she's consumed in such a short span weigh on her neurons, sensory and motor, Zoë heaves herself from her stool, pays the tab, and makes her way to the motel. Her thoughts are going in circles, and her body is lacking its innate grace, so she knows she's not as tolerant of alcohol as she once was.

Across the lot, Raylan is just pulling in. She hesitates at the corner of the building, right off the street, because she's nowhere close to being on her game, and she isn't allowed to slip up. So an encounter with the lawman could potentially be unwise.

Or it could be fun.

Regardless of her more hedonistic impulses, Zoë _does_ try to sneak inside. But he glimpses her before she makes it past the first row of hedges hugging the front office and reroutes his vectoring accordingly, a curious cant to his features.

The amused pull to his mouth only deepens when, in her haste to hide, she miscalculates the height of the curb and goes sprawling into the prickly bushes with an aggrieved _yelp_! She's too irritated to be embarrassed as she puffs dark tousles of hair out of her eyes, sees his boots come to a halt in front of where she's about to wrestle herself out of the greenery.

Hands on his hips, he tilts to look down at her, so that the brim of his hat shrouds his eyes. "Developing a case of the green thumb, are you?"

Groaning, Zoë scrunches her face up at him in displeasure. "Hilarious," she mutters, struggling to free herself of the tangled branches. "I'd like to see you try . . ."

"To what?" he challenges mildly. "Walk a straight line?"

"Well, _no_." She shoots him an exasperated look. "You're sober. That so wouldn't be fair." She's on her knees, nearly upright, when one ankle snags on a protruding root in the soil and she almost smacks facedown into the pavement.

"Unfair," he says. "I'm afraid I'd have to agree." Before she can hurt herself, he bends forward and hauls her to her feet on the sidewalk. He's stepping back when she sways sideways, threatening to careen right back into the bushes, so he returns his grasp to her shoulder, snakes his other arm around her waist.

"Hm," she hums in response, letting him hold her upright, because her knees feel weird and insubstantial. One of her hands falls against his sternum, but the other comes up in front of their faces before she pinches her thumb and forefinger together. "Thanks. You know, I think my equilibrium is a little off kilter tonight is all."

Raylan only chuckles, urging her down the sidewalk towards their grouping of rooms. "Depth perception too, I'd say."

"Could be," she retorts, an easy shrug shifting her shoulders against him. He smells like smoke, sandalwood, and aftershave—a concoction that reminds her of familiar masculinity. He feels warm, a hard body bigger than her own, strong and contrasted. It makes her fuzziness fade, become something thicker, richer, more dangerous. It spreads an enjoyable tingle of awareness through her limbs, sends desire thrumming through her veins, and her pulse beats like a hammer in her ears because of it.

It's been a long while since she's let herself feel this way . . . and she's _really_ missed the sensation.

Clearing her throat, Zoë tips her head up to peer at the relaxed marshal under a furrowed brow. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"You got your key?" He stops in front of her stoop, props her against the doorjamb. She nods, goes about fishing it out, hands it over. So he says, "Shoot."

"If you grew up here, which I know you did, why is it you're living out of a motel?"

He's stepped up onto the elevated stoop beside her to unlock the door, his attention seemingly on his hands, but she's turned her head to keep that narrowed gaze fixed. "I've only recently come back," he tells her, almost absentmindedly. "I don't plan on staying any longer than I have to."

"So not getting a permanent place is what—a last-ditch effort of protest?"

Sighing, Raylan turns his body to face her as he pushes the door inward. She's a good head shorter than him, but she arches her neck so frequently that it only makes it interesting looking down on her, especially with that knowing smirk curved on those glossy lips. "You could say that."

Zoë nods at this, like he's just told her something profound, eyes innocently wide, and wants to know, "Are you busy?"

"What does it look like?" he answers, but his eyes narrow a bit and his head tilts again, forever bewildered by the dark-haired girl before him.

Nodding again, she twists her body past his, whirls around once she's over the threshold, and sways forward, just close enough to leave an imprint of cajoling curves and the scent of jasmine.

One hand catches the end of his tie. With one of those consciously-adorable smiles he's discovering of her, she wraps the material around her palm, higher and higher, slowly reeling him in.

"You remind me of someone." Her voice is unbelievably soft, lush, promising. It's one of those resonances that make his eyelids feel heavy and his hands feel restless.

He knows darn well that she's baiting him. Yet he can't bring himself to mind it so much. "Bad someone?" he wonders, humoring her by taking a small step forward, until his boot bends over the ridge of the threshold and he catches the doorjamb in either hand. He feels as if he's venturing into the perimeter of a web she's cast, and he has no idea what will happen to him once he crosses that beckoning line, whether he'll be able to break free or not, whether he'll even want to. Hesitation, wariness, suspicion, it's all there in the way he's gripping the wood, even as his body slants for the girl.

With a pleased murmur from deep in her throat, Zoë briefly catches her lower lip between her teeth amidst a blinding smile, and turns her head from side to side. Her arm has been extended from her body, gripping his tie, but now she tucks it in, closing the extra space between them. She arches to fit into his slanted posture without _actually_ touching. "Good someone . . ."

From the way those vivid blues' perpetual sparkle dims, burning up into him, darkening with lust, he finds his body reacting admirably, despite himself.

This girl has been a thorn in his side since the first moment they met. She's captivated his thoughts, his focus, and not in any appreciable way. She's made him nothing but deeply confounded. All he's seen from her so far is questionable behavior and definitive deflection. The only thing he's certain of about Zoë Zuko is that she's up to no good. Yet . . .

He's seeing something new now. That revolving armory of masks she wears is absent. The walls are lowering just the slightest, and a quiet craving is shining out for him, drawing Raylan inescapably in.

Even if he was man enough to turn down an offer this appealing, he doesn't know whether it'd be his wisest move or not. After all, playing nice hasn't gotten him very far with this girl. Maybe getting closer wouldn't be such a bad idea. If it weren't for that little voice in the back of his head warning him of how screwed he is.

This all flits through his thoughts during the heartbeat or so that she waits, memorizing the layered facets of his features, before she uses that hold on his tie to drag him down into an eager kiss, and all higher reasoning capabilities slide right out of Raylan's reach.

Her lips are soft, demanding, her hands are seeking, yearning, while they wander over his shoulders, his back, his abdomen, and her chest strains against his as she angles into him, setting urgency ablaze inside of him. His tongue sweeps into her mouth, anxious to taste her. His hands latch onto her hips of their own accord, hoist her up, where she hooks her legs around his waist.

One hand splays at the small of her back, pinning Zoë to him, before the other goes upward, tunnels into the mussed waves of her tresses, curves over the nape of her neck. He carries her inside the rest of the way, kicks the door shut behind them, and presses her into the nearest wall.

The next second, they two of them are tugging and tearing at clothing between messy, hot, open-mouthed kisses. His hat gets knocked off when she winds an arm around his neck, props an elbow on his shoulder, combs her fingers through his hair, and clutches. She's got his tie undone and is through the first half of his checkered button-down when he forces her arms up to yank her shirt over her head and toss it aside. She tries to capture his mouth in another kiss, but he dodges, pulls his upper half back enough to drink in the unguarded sight of her.

"Hang on," he murmurs thoughtlessly. "Just hang on a second."

Long-fingered hands cradle her face, stirring her from the frenetic haze, and Zoë blinks, meeting his clouded gaze. The calloused brush of his thumbs makes her shiver as his hands slide languidly downward. Exploratory caresses graze over the faint ridge of her collarbone, and the swell of her breasts, covered incompletely by the black lace of her bra, across the plane of her stomach, and only halt once he reaches the clasp of her low-slung jeans. He has them unfastened with a deft twist of his thumb and forefinger, but doesn't drag them down her hips, or dip a hand inside. Instead, his touch roams back up to her neck, where it buries in her locks, guiding her into another kiss.

This one isn't as urgent or hungry as it is indulgent, savoring, tempered.

When they finally surface for air, there is a ripple of surprise to be found in one another's eyes. A jolt of unease arcs between the two, and they push away from the wall in unison, breaking out of the distracting moment.

As her legs unwind from around him, Zoë's fingers dig into the undulating muscle of his shoulders, and Raylan delves deeper past her lips, spinning them around. They fall blindly to the bed in a flurry of clashing passion, struggling for dominance in an ebb and flow sort of rhythm. On one knee at the foot of the bed, he takes the waistband of her jeans in his hands and rucks them off. When she goes to sit up, he wraps a hand around her ankle and gives a gentle tug, dragging her down the bed.

"You still owe me a story."

Beneath him, Zoë hitches her calves over his thighs, yearning up into him until their mouths meet instinctively, once again. Using his preoccupation with her tongue to her advantage, she chooses to channel momentum, reverses their positions.

"That's right," she replies, voice gone husky, "I do."

She's straddling his hips, flipping through the remaining clasps of his shirt, before he realizes what's happened. He finds his hands kneading at the soft flesh of her waist, almost compulsively. She forces him upright as she pulls the fabric off of him, throws it over her shoulder, and their bodies crash together in another kiss. His wife-beater follows a second later.

"Want it right now?" she taunts, lips moving playfully against his mouth.

That's a surprisingly tough call. "Right this second?" he checks, earns a drawn-out nod in return. "Not particularly."

"Well, then what are you groaning about?" A hand to the center of his chest and a hard shove has Raylan on his back again.

She's kissing her way down the length of his body, hands and lips tracing shapes, leaving spectral trails of fire in her wake, when she freezes up all of sudden, as if something's bitten her. Drawing onto her haunches, Zoë lets her hands slide out of reach of him, heavily reluctant, while she watches him prop up onto his elbows.

At his glance of concern, she says forlornly, "Sorry, cowboy. Looks like I have to go."

Before she can escape, though, an arm locks around her waist. She's torn off her feet, flipped onto her back in the middle of the mattress, and pinned beneath superior mass before she can avoid it. Expecting a bewildered expression and a barrage of questions, she's startled enough to flinch when all she gets is his face burrowing into the crook of her neck, mouth sliding, teeth grazing lightly. His hips rotate, stroking into hers, and Zoë is caught in the resultant explosion of friction.

"Okay," she manages to get out before her head strains back against the bed. Her eyes are fluttering. Her body is moving on its own, matching his teasing tempo, and it won't be deprived. "Okay. I guess it can wait a few—" She cuts off into a moan.

From there, they're hot, and they're heavy, and they're lost in sensation. But there is an important reason she'd been about to flee, and as much as she's pretending she's forgotten, it hasn't gone away.

With a wide-eyed gasp of panic, Zoë arches up, thrusting Raylan off of her. He hits the mattress on his back, a gasp of air exhaling from him in surprise. He starts to grasp for her, opening his mouth to protest, when suddenly she's just . . . not there anymore. The door is still closed, and she would have had to climb over him to reach it so fast, but that doesn't change the fact that she's missing.

The girl's disappeared into thin air, leaving him hanging, totally bewildered. _Again_.

Sinking back against the worn-out headboard, he heaves a conflicted sigh, stares off into the empty space she'd been taking up not two minutes ago. "Well, I'll be damned."

* * *

><p><em>TBC<em>


	5. with all of these lies in our way

V. _with all of these lies in our way._

After the rift jerks her in and drops her out, Zoë opens her eyes to see that she's standing on a rooftop in some unrecognizable metropolis. In her bra and panties, no less. She's not sure why she's here. In fact, she has no clue. But that doesn't freak her out. She's used to it. Regardless, she'll know what it is when she finds it—or, rather, when _it_ finds _her_. Which should be any second now, if the tightening tingles low in her abdomen are any indication.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she walks to the edge of the tarmac and looks out over the view of bright lights. Billboards in the distance tell her that, however far she's gone in space, she's still in the year of her present.

"What are you doing here?" a shrill voice chokes out from somewhere to her left.

Zoë swivels to find a beanpole of a girl with superfine blonde hair draping down to her waist, pale skin, jade-green eyes, and an oval face. For a split-second, she reminds her of Isolde. Then she takes in the distinct features, birdlike and distraught, puffy nose, red-rimmed eyes, swollen lips, sorrowful expression. The pieces fit together nicely and she knows exactly why she's been brought here now.

"No one is supposed to be up here," Blondie laments, sniffling. She's got her arms crossed over her stomach, as if she thinks she's going to be sick, and the raincoat she's wearing completely dwarfs her, making her seem all the more fragile. "You're not supposed to be here."

"Neither are you," Zoë replies in a gentle tone. When she takes a step forward, the girl lurches backward a few feet, stumbling over herself. Her eyes go wide. "It's alright. I'm here to help."

Shaking her head, Blondie says, "You can't help me. No one can," as if she's read the script. Zoë has heard it a million times before. It's always the same. "Just go away."

"I can't do that," Zoë tells her. "I'm sorry." Then, taking a breath, she holds off on the regular grief speech and instead glances down at her scantily-clad self. "Firstly, do you think I could beg that slicker off of you?"

She has to handle this no-clothes situation before she goes into the rigmarole of talking Blondie out of whatever she's about to attempt, because no way is she gonna get arrested for indecent exposure again. Once is more than enough, thank you.

The girl is taken aback. Surprise morphs into an incredulous scrutiny that scrunches up her rawboned face. "You want my coat?"

Zoë quirks an eyebrow, says, "Ah-huh."

"But—" her gaze flickers over the length of Zoë "—why are you in lingerie?"

"Because I hate granny panties," she quips before she can bite her tongue. When the blonde frowns, she heaves a sigh and shimmies impatiently in the chilly breeze. "As you can see, I'm a little in the wind here." But the new girl still looks skeptical. "Come on! It's not like you can't spare it."

"Fine," she concedes, shrugging out of the white raincoat and tossing it across the paltry distance. "You can have it. Just leave me alone."

Zoë lets the nylon bundle smack her in the chest before she catches it there, sweeps herself into the folds of it, and buttons up the front. She hates when this happens. If her traveling was a scientific thing, shifting at a molecular level and all, she wouldn't be able to bring anything inanimate with her, not even clothing. But she uses magic, meaning she shouldn't have to suffer this particular dilemma.

Watching the girl swivel on her heel and scurry off across the rooftop, Zoë catches her lip between her teeth and sucks in a deep breath. Blondie climbs over the edge and starts levering herself down a ladder. Zoë follows at a distance until her thighs bump into the brick of the erected edge. Leaning over, black tousles fall over her shoulders, sway in the crisp night air, while she watches the dainty girl veer off onto an adjacent fire escape and start winding her way downward.

"Um, okay," she whispers to herself, drawing back from the ledge. She turns to the rest of the rooftop, takes a long look around, searching for a sign.

The knot of tingles in her stomach urges her around a bend. On the other side of the access landing, she finds a plaid blanket stretched out across the tarmac. Amidst is a spread of litter, a ravaged picnic basket, tipped over. She stops there, soaks in the scene, and the telltale shimmer of disturbance makes itself known to her magically-enhanced vision. Something went wrong here. The girl has already changed something. She isn't a fellow traveler—Zoë would have sensed that—but she's obviously displaced somehow. She wouldn't be able to create inconsistencies otherwise.

Glancing toward the city streets below, Zoë knows what she has to do now. She triggers the power, shifts spatially, and takes herself down to the alleyway. As she coalesces, Blondie is just jumping from the last staircase of the fire escape, landing in a crouch nearby. She shoots to her feet, tries to take off towards the mouth of the alley, before Zoë catches her around that wasp-waisted middle and drags her back a few paces.

"Let me go!" she hollers, slamming an elbow into Zoë's ribs. But her tiny limbs are as ineffectual as they look, so it doesn't grant her much leeway. "I have to go! I have to follow him!"

She asks, "Who?" simply to get the ball rolling. She holds tight on to the girl through a lot of wild thrashing. "Who do you have to follow?"

"Trevor!"

"Trevor?" she echoes. "Is he who you drove away from the picnic? Trevor?"

"Yes!" the girl exclaims. Words and emotions gush out of her now. She begins to go somewhat lax in Zoë's arms. "Yes. Yes. I drove him away. I told him not to wait for me. I told him I don't love him. I said I wouldn't wait for him. I drove him away."

"Why?" she persists, no real inquisitive tones to be found in the firmness of her voice. "Is something bad going to happen to Trevor? Did you alter that?"

"He's gone," the girl replies, more to herself than to Zoë. "He's alive. He's safe. But I have to make sure it's over. So you have to let me go. Please. Let me go. I have to find him. I have to make sure he's safe."

"He's not," Zoë tells her softly, but she unwinds her arms from around the petite form she binds and lets the girl throw herself forward into a sloppy sprint.

Shaking her head, Zoë takes off after her, weaves and leaps and darts through the bustling streets, following that blurry streak of flaxen hair through the night.

They run for dozens of blocks, bluster across a boulevard, and trip through a park. Finally, she skids to a halt on a dirty sidewalk, along a deserted street, doubles over, panting desperately, clutching her side. Zoë eases her speed in increments. She's not nearly as winded, but her lungs do burn.

"He's up there," Blondie rasps between jagged stabs of breath. She turns her face skyward, eyes scanning over the five-floor walkup before them with a frantic edge of impatience. "We were supposed to stay all night on that rooftop, stargazing, for the comet. We weren't supposed to move 'til the sun was coming up. He was supposed to go one way. I was supposed to go the other. He wasn't supposed to make it home."

_Oy_, Zoë thinks. _What a mess_. There used to be a time when her heart would go out to the girl. All she feels these days is the tediousness of it all. "What did you do?"

Blondie's panting becomes a strangled sob. Her emaciated shoulders tremble. She turns her back on the building, sinks down to sit on the curb, her knees against her chest. "I sent an IM to myself from his number, told her to show up late. Then I went in her place, picked a fight, and broke his heart. When I sent him away, he was so mad. He didn't understand. But I had to get him out of there. I couldn't let him . . ."

Sighing, Zoë lowers herself to the curb beside the girl. "Do you know who I am?"

"I think so," she snivels, scrubbing the back of a hand under her nose. "The lady that sold me the spell warned the Mother Sentinel might try to stop me."

"Did she explain _why_ I would do such a thing?"

Blondie gives her a sullen shrug. "It's your job?"

"But why is it my job, honey?" Zoë locks her arms around her legs, fastening the hem of the coat closed around her. "Why do I have to stop you?"

"I don't know!" she snaps, hurtling to her feet. "And I don't care."

"I don't believe you," Zoë counters evenly, staying put. "I think you do know."

"Yeah, I know! Alright?" she practically snarls as she whirls back around to face the raven-haired one. "I know the rules. You're not allowed to screw with Mother Nature and her causality. Any act that would violate causality and trigger temporal paradoxes is expressly forbidden." Her droning recitation sharpens and she takes a step closer as she demands, "But isn't freewill just as sacred to you people? Isn't this _my_ choice?"

"Not when you're using magic to alter the past, it's not." Zoë rises to her feet then, sensing a precipice. She takes the blonde by the arm and pulls her up onto the sidewalk before a zooming car can clip them. "You don't have power, do you?"

"Not really," she admits. "I'm a Wiccan. But the witch told me—"

"Whoever performed the incantation for you is a swindler," Zoë interjects, vehemence leaking through her cool façade. "She obviously didn't share with you what this trip will truly accomplish."

"I can save him!" the girl insists. With a rough jerk of her body, she tears out of Zoë's grasp. "I know I can. I just have to—"

"To what?" she challenges, running low on patience. "Maybe you saved him from however he was going to kick it tonight—or maybe you didn't. Either way, it's not over. If he is in Death's design, his time is up. It's going to happen no matter what you do. Only instead of getting hit by a car or shot in a mugging, he's going to slip in the tub or crash his car in a busy intersection. And, because you've interfered, he's likely to take a mother and her three children with him when he goes. Innocents that aren't supposed to die yet will suffer. Everyone he comes into contact with after tonight will have a different path than before. Accidents will occur because the balance has been tipped. Even if it seems insignificant to you, it's not. Consequences are far-reaching and unforeseeable. That will all be on _you_."

At last, Blondie is absorbing this. Her obstinacy is being diluted with every word Zoë thrusts at her. Before her eyes, the girl shrinks into herself. All of her fight and her fuel and her lingering hope begins to dwindle.

"The spell only lasts until midnight," she whispers tiredly. She's staring off into the void now, dimmed eyes unseeing. "I can't stay. I can't keep watch." She pauses to take a breath, and it shudders into a choking spasm on the way out, doubling her over. "He's going to die and there's nothing I can do!"

Zoë hates that she has to do this. She's not a grief counselor. Yet this is what her life is consumed with—moments like these.

She stands where she is, letting the younger girl experience that reopened wound, letting her get the worst of it out, and she waits for as long as she's able. Finally, she offers out a hand and says softly, "Let me take you home."

Blondie looks up slowly through bleary eyes, blinks at Zoë, and for a moment seems as if she'll take her hand.

Then the entrance to the walkup flings open, startling both. Sweeping an arm around the quaking girl, she ushers her behind a nearby stairwell just as the shimmering outline of a boy comes pounding down the steps.

There's a phone plastered to his ear as he hurries out into the street. "What the hell are you talking about? I didn't stand you up! We were there—"

From the way Blondie tries to lurch into his oblivious wake, Zoë is fairly certain of who the newcomer is. "No," she murmurs into the girl's ear, hanging on through her halfhearted struggles. "Let him go."

Without waiting for permission, she closes her hands over the girl, envelopes her, and lets the Mother Sentinel power shift them to the interloper's original departure.

After a brief investigation, Zoë finds herself in Dallas, Texas—3 days after she left the lawman in her motel room. In short order, she goes about handing the stricken girl off to her worried-sick mother, dealing with the hack of a practitioner that caused this mess to begin with, and returning to the time of disturbance so she can ensure that everything realigns just so.

With her unscheduled interlude over, Zoë is able to return to Lexington, relieved to find that her room hasn't been rented out while she's been gone. Since her present likes to keep moving forward without her during every little detour through the stream of time, she's still missing those 3 days, and there's nothing to be done about it.

If anything vital had occurred while she was displaced, her power would have pulled her in on an earlier point. Technically, she could travel back to the approximate moment she got sucked away in the first place, but things tend to get weird when she does that. No one will tell her why.

Belongings are scattered across the room. Her messenger bag full of supplies is still tucked under the bed where she put it. Her duffel of clothing is still shoved into the alcove of a closet. Her toothbrush is still in the adjacent bathroom. Going through her checklist, it isn't difficult to see that things have been moved, ever so slightly. The lawman must have searched the place when she disappeared. She'd expect nothing less. But this does present another dilemma.

The cell in her bag buzzes with all of her missed calls. She listens to her voicemail as she finds something to wear, climbs into her clothing, and corrals her mussed locks up into a lazy topknot to keep it out of her face.

On her way out, she knocks on the marshal's door, but doesn't get an answer. It's late in the evening, and she senses a migraine building behind her eyes, so she cruises through a drive-in, picks herself up a milkshake and a batch of fries, fully intending to crawl under the covers as soon as she's nourished. Unfortunately, her curiosity ruins that plan. As she pulls back into the motel parking lot and shuts off the engine of the Silverado, she realizes that she won't be able to sleep until she touches base.

Groaning internally, Zoë finishes up her salt-soaked fries, takes a last sip of her drink, pops a painkiller, hooks the strap of her messenger bag across her shoulder, screws her eyes shut, and thinks of Raylan. Her power stirs, nowhere near drained from the few easy trips she's used it for so far, and it shifts her smoothly through space.

It's always a little disorienting when she doesn't know where she's going. If she has predestination routes pictured in her mind, it's easier. But when she's reaching out and asking the power to guide her via a specific person or moment, it likes to knock her off her feet by throwing her into a situation headfirst.

A beatdown in the unpaved lot of a grungy bar is exactly the sort of scene she could have done without coming upon this evening. Alas, here she is.

Déjà vu hits her as Zoë hovers at the edge of the lot, just beyond the pooling light of the lamppost. Lawman is on the ground. Around him is a trio of soused hillbillies, two of which are unfairly oversized, having a grand ol' ball.

Undecided on whether to approach or simply observe, she pauses a moment. That's all it takes for Raylan to roll off his side, onto his back, and catch the ankle of a foot coming at his ribcage. He wrenches it sideways, sends the boor toppling over, and follows him into the splash of gravel to go to work on his face. But the others are on him then, dragging him off their buddy, and throwing him back into the dirt.

It doesn't take a genius to see that he's brought this on himself. If he hadn't, he'd be fighting with his brain, rather than that quiet fury he hides. There's no holster clipped to his belt tonight, nor a badge, and he's garbed in nothing but a torn pair of Levi's and an old Miami Dolphins tee. Plus, he seems to have lost his hat in the scuffle.

Another second or so goes by before she's sure that this is a usual occurrence for the marshal. She should just wait for it to be over. But her patience has worn thin about an hour ago. And the migraine is most definitely on its way. So she cuts in.

There's an air of long-suffering indulgence about her when she slips a hand into the bag at her hip, making her way across the lot, and pulls out one of her sturdier batons. "Hey, boys. Nice night for a fray, huh?" she says, lightly enough to not immediately appear as a new threat.

"A what?" wonders the smaller one, who's the first to turn around to acknowledge her. His face scrunches with his confusion.

"A fight," she clarifies, coming to a dead stop within range, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "Anyhow, I've got business with my friend here." She indicates the haphazard man on the ground in the middle of them with her chin. "So, if you're finished—"

After another kick to the marshal's sternum, the biggest of the bunch whirls on her, towering up close with that brawny frame. "Who do you think you are?" he blusters, about as belligerent as he can get, with an added sprinkling of expletives so vulgar that she pretends not to hear them. "Get your ass back inside, princess. Find another dick to take home tonight. We got dibs on this one."

Zoë purses her lips, pain thrumming in her head having stripped away all pretenses of tolerance. "Well, now. That's just uncalled for." Wanting him provoked, she reaches out with her free hand and gives the boor a sharp shove. He wavers a little, but doesn't even stumble back a step. "Obviously, no one ever taught you how to speak to a lady."

Disbelief scrawls strongly across his reddened face. He leans back in, coming even closer this time, so that the reek of beer and bourbon on his breath is cloying for her olfactory senses. "Oh?" he challenges, laughter bubbling up from his chest. "Is that what you are?" He brings up a fist, trying to make her flinch, but unfurls it at the last second, picks derisively at the capped sleeve of her blouse instead. "'Cause I don't think so."

In the background, his buddies have left off whaling on the lawman in favor of paying attention to the new exchange. When the boor laughs, they add in a couple chuckles of their own, but all fall flat. They look nervous, as if they aren't sure what their de facto ringleader is getting up to, and they aren't overly thrilled with the prospects. On the other hand, Raylan is propped up on his elbows by now, watching with an unreadable expression, though there's an almost intrigued spark in his dark eyes.

Caustic remark on the tip of her tongue, Zoë reaches out again, gives the boor another pointed shove. At the flash of his eyes, she tips her head to one side and cocks a mocking eyebrow.

His fists clench at his sides. His jaw shifts. He tells her, "Be real sure you wanna go down this road, baby."

"Honestly?" she retorts, glancing away, projecting disinterest. "All I want is for you and your apes to get lost."

"What'd she call me!" squawks Hillbilly Number 3, all indignant like. He starts forward, only to have his gangly buddy raise up a restraining arm in his path.

"Alright," she exclaims softly, a heavy sigh falling from her lips. She tips her head again, stretches her neck with a quick twist, and then slams a heel down into the boor's nearest instep with a deadpanned "Let's get this over with."

After a grunt of surprise, he does exactly as she's expecting, puts his whole body behind a forward swing, wanting to make it hurt.

Except that she's already unsheathed the length of the telescopic baton with a flick of her wrist before he's even pulled back to attack. The collapsed rod of steel expands with a snap, locking into place thanks to inertia and friction.

Instead of dodging the blow, Zoë rounds out the flick into an overhand motion, brings the rod down diagonally, and deflects his fist with a harsh _crack_. While he lets out a yell of shocked pain, she flips the baton in her grip, sidesteps, and sweeps it behind his knees. Kicking up gravel, the boor lands flat on his back.

"Don't get up," she tells him calmly, the ballpoint tip of the baton digging into his throat when he tries to thrash upward. Her gaze rolls up to find his two cohorts looking like their stuck between a rock and a hard place. "As I was trying to say—are we finished here, gentlemen?"

The gangly one glances from his two buddies. The boor on the ground is cradling his wounded fist, outraged, cursing and spitting, "You broke my hand! She broke my hand!"

"Bitch," declares Hillbilly Number 3, rather snidely. But he doesn't try to approach.

Number 2 takes him by the sleeve of his ratty flannel overshirt. "Let's just go."

"Yeah," he answers after a beat of reluctance, "we oughta get Duke to the clinic."

Zoë takes several measured steps back, lets the baton hang idly at her side. When the guys converge to drag the hulking fellow to his feet, one at each arm, she offers up a friendly smile. "Good idea."

Once they're gone, she swivels her gaze to Raylan, sees that he's not even attempting to clamber himself up out of the dirt, and raises an arch brow. Still, he stays quiet.

"I don't even get a 'Hello'? Or how about a 'Nice to see you'?" she quips, and ambles her way towards him. "I sure don't expect a 'Why, thank you, Zoë' for saving your ass. So I'd say that I'm fairly easy to please."

From his spot on the ground, he cocks his head at her and counters, "Now, who exactly asked you to intervene?" in that smooth, low, unflappable voice of his.

Zoë hesitates at the bumper of a muddy pickup, bends over to snatch his hat off the ground, and dusts it off as she reaches his side. "Don't you have the sense to not cause trouble when you're too hung-over to keep from getting stomped on?"

"Evidently not."

After helping him to his feet, she ducks under a hanging arm and fits herself into the crevice of his shoulder to keep him steady. From the particular way he's hunched, she wouldn't be surprised if he'd cracked a few ribs. Setting a ginger hand across his torso, she guesses that they're only bruised. "You got a car in the vicinity?"

"Parked around front," he tells her, and then takes his hat back. "I don't think I should drive."

She thinks he's right. "Hey, I need a ride, anyway."

With that settled, they amble their way around the building, silence thick between the two, and find his sedan waiting in a corner space.

Once she's spilled him into the passenger seat, she slides fluidly behind the wheel and adjusts the seat—because, _damn_, he's got long legs—before she ventures to speak again. "That happens a lot around here, I take it?"

"How else are we Kentucky boys gonna pass the time?" he deadpans.

Putting on a flawlessly playful mask to counteract, she drawls, "I could probably list a few worthy alternatives."

Unwelcoming silence fills the vehicle for the rest of the drive back to the motel. She doesn't try to break it, because she knows what he wants to hear, and she can't just spit it out, even if she wants to. She veers in, parks in a wide space near his rental, and shuts off the engine, pitching them into an even more intense quiet. Cicadas are loud in the surroundings of the night, even louder than the passing freeway. It puts a restless itch between her shoulder blades.

Raylan's withdrawn demeanor persists. As subtle a change as it is, she's inexorably bugged by his cold shoulder.

Eyes on her hands, and hands resting lightly on the upper rim of the steering wheel, Zoë draws in a shallow breath to find her voice. "Anything noteworthy happen while I was away?" she wonders.

The man shifts in his seat, fingers furling around the handlebar above his window, and stifles a pained sigh. His tone is tight when he replies, "Nothing but a reappearance of the ninja bridesmaids comes to mind."

Alarm ripples through her at that. With practiced control, she keeps the startlement and the proceeding stress off her face. Just in case it's in her eyes, she keeps her gaze fixed straight ahead. "You must have handled them well enough." Otherwise, she would have been tugged to the incident. "Did you manage to hang onto any of 'em?"

"Not even close. There wasn't a trace." His tone hardens imperceptibly. "But you probably knew that."

"Not for certain," she counters, only to fall awkwardly silent. She searches for a witty non sequitur, some way to make things flow again. But she's stuck, snagged on the realization that the lawman isn't out of the woods yet, after all. It means that getting Avery Bryce to Syracuse wasn't what makes Givens important to the Order.

"Thought you said that was taken care of," he intones, all mild and unnerving.

Shaken from her reverie, she amends, "I said it would be. And it will."

"How?" he questions. Only, it's more of an accusation, a loaded word.

Zoë shakes her head from side to side in slow-motion, clenches and unclenches her fingers around the wheel, wets her lips. She doesn't know how. Maybe she just needs to give it more time. Maybe whatever event he's the center of will happen soon. Maybe she can still prevent the Sirens from derailing said event, and ensure the marshal becomes inconsequential to the Order. Or maybe this situation is trickier than she believed.

Maybe it will come to her in the morning.

When he confirms that she's not going to respond, Raylan gathers his resolve. In a dangerously soft voice, he states, "We need to talk."

Resigned now, she lets a fraction of her inner weariness out for him to see. She pops the driver's door, rounds the car, and waits for him to open his own. When he glances up at her, she says, "Let's get inside."

He acquiesces, because she makes it sound like a compromise, and he thinks he's just as tired as she is.

Inside, he sinks to perch painstakingly at the foot of his bed. He watches the girl as she unhooks the bag from her shoulder, sets it on the rickety café table by the window, and digs out a compact first aid kit. He's got his own in the bathroom, but hers looks particular, and he isn't in the mood to nitpick, so he keeps his mouth shut.

"Tell me something," she murmurs, coming to stand between his knees. She's got some sort of bluish salve on the pad of her thumb. Without preamble, she cups his jaw in her other hand, guides his face where she wants it, and begins smoothing the cool gel of a substance over the various cuts and scrapes. "Did you instigate the bar brawl or did you just cooperate?"

"I started it," he answers truthfully, preoccupied with the zinging sort of sting that radiates from all the places that salve is being absorbed. It's not an antiseptic sort of burn, but something else, something sharper. Invigorating, almost.

When she's done with his face, she slides both hands up under the hem of his shirt, rubs a faint trail of the stuff over the core of his bruised sternum. Then she wipes her fingers clean on a washcloth and walks out the door, leaving him momentarily puzzled.

_Ice_, he belatedly realizes. _She's gone to get ice_. It occurs to him that she could just not come back, but she left her bag behind, so he's not concerned. And a few moments later, she returns with a bucket.

"How are your ribs?" she wants to know, even as she goes about divesting him of his T-shirt. "Worse?"

As he raises his arms up over his head for her, Raylan winces in anticipation. But the expected stab of pain never comes. In fact, all the dull throbbing that had made itself a constant since back at the bar is gone now. "Better."

Zoë's mouth quirks upward, forming a soft smile. "You're welcome."

Bewildered, he brings fingertips up to his face, as she's dropping onto her knees between his legs, and feels for the motley array of wounds, only to find nothing but a faint tingle remaining, like a phantom sensation. The only mark left amidst his abruptly unmarred features is the split in his bottom lip.

Who knows? The girl could probably chase that away as well—with a kiss.

Gaze uncharacteristically downcast, Zoë begins unwinding a spool of elastic bandage. Silent and sedated, she slides her hands in the space between his arms and flank, circles the bandage around the worst of the damage to his ribcage for localized pressure. The pain in his midsection is gone, but the injury lingers, and it needs to be dealt with properly if it's not going to bother him tomorrow.

"Hold this," she says at last, placing one of his hands over a spot of the twining bandage. His knuckles are busted, skin chafed off, discolored. As she bundles cubes from the bucket into a makeshift icepack, she asks, "Why did you start it?"

Raylan doesn't answer.

"Do you always resort to gratuitous violence to work off your frustration?" she continues, placing the ice snugly between two folds of the bandage. She dusts his hand aside to finish winding it. "There are easier ways."

"But none as thorough," he parries, voice devoid of inflection. He turns his head down ever further, watches her face closely as she pins the tail of the bandage in place.

Instead of moving back, one of her hands strays upward, and her throat constricts as she swallows down whatever emotion threatens to spill over. For a long moment, she fixates solely on tracing the pattern of his exposed muscle tone, ignoring him, ignoring herself. Meanwhile, frissons of something unexplainable spiral like melted electricity across his entire body at the girl's soft, bold, studying touch.

"Zoë," he utters her name into the silence. It makes her close her eyes. Mouth slightly pursed, brow furrowed, she tries to block it out. The curiosity of what it is that she's trying to forget nearly distracts him.

"Is the pain gone?"

"Yes." Pushing aside the urge to understand whatever it is he's picking up from the enigma, Raylan focuses on what's relevant. "Where'd you go?"

The girl's voice is unreadable when she answers, "I don't rightly know." Slowly, her lids lift, scroll, and she stares up at him through a shroud of dark lashes.

For some inexplicable reason, he finds himself disturbed. "I see such strange things in your eyes," he murmurs thoughtlessly, catching his tongue a moment too late.

Zoë's hand drops away. Her shoulders go tense. "It doesn't mean anything."

"Of course it does." Raylan frowns. He's baffled by the simple fact that he doesn't feel confused over the words that flow instinctively out of him. "It's your mouth that can't be trusted, constantly spinning pretty lies for yourself and everyone around you."

An expression comes over her heart-shaped features then, as if he's wounded her somehow. "You don't know what you're talking about."

What she says should make sense. But he knows it's wrong. "I think I do."

Not sure what to do with that, she pulls her hands into her slanted lap, knees stinging from the roughness of the carpet, and her jaw shifts, giving away her inner agitation. "If you must know, I was in Texas."

"Why?"

"To keep someone from making a dangerous mistake," is all she volunteers, which is so much more than he thought he'd get out of her. "Sometimes, there are things that you just shouldn't know."

He is piercing in the quiet intensity that's focused on her as he absorbs this. She's trying to ignore it, he can see as much, but it's affecting her. Thing is, he isn't sure _how_.

Silk waves of her hair fall over one shoulder, shadowing the doleful cast of her face, until he says abruptly, "So. You're an honest to God witch, huh?" Amusement alights in her eyes then, her pursed mouth breaks into a smirk, and she shakes those tresses back as she gives him a soft cadence of laughter.

"What makes you say that?"

The sight loosens something constricted in his chest, but Raylan is still as serious as ever. "Oh, I don't know. Could have something to do with you disappearing into thin air 3 nights ago," he suggests. "Leaving me in a sorry state of affairs, I might add."

"Hm," she hums absently in response, gaze averting. She dusts a faint touch across his chest again, sends him an arch look. "You're surprisingly carved for an old man."

Raylan makes a vaguely distressed sound, scrubs a tired hand over his worn face. "Old man, yeah." His eyes settle on hers. "Too old for _you_."

He's being serious, and meaningful, but this seems to crack her up, which only confuses him more.

"_Oh_," she cries softly, shaking her head with an open-mouthed smile. Her brow rises incredulously. She's only mildly patronizing when she drawls, "You're adorable."

"You're insufferable," he volleys evenly.

Zoë quirks an eyebrow at him, quips, "You're suffering just fine."

It's meant as sarcasm, but the connotations linger in the air between them, hers and his own, and it ruins the levity they'd managed to capture.

Wiping under her eyes a moment later, she goes to stand. It's only then that he realizes what's happened. Frustration rekindles. "You're not going to explain."

"Explain what?" she retorts, no curious lilt to be found in her tone. When she starts to turn away, his hand wraps lightly around her wrist. They're eyes lock again. "Fine," she concedes after a brief deliberation, "I'm not going anywhere."

Slipping from his grasp, Zoë saunters backwards into the open, shrugging out of her jacket. Raylan watches this move intently, wary and suspicious. The switch by the door flips, cuts out the dim lighting.

"I don't feel like being alone, anyways."

She feels his eyes burning into her as she rounds the other side of the bed and toes out of her ankle boots. All easy nonchalance and motiveless exhaustion, she shimmies out of her trousers before she slides beneath the covers.

Impassive, he watches her get comfortable in the shadowed darkness, listens to her breathing even out almost instantly, and has to admit to himself that she's done it again.

_That's not exactly what I meant_, he thinks. She keeps evading the truth, his questions, dangling the promise of a sane explanation in front of him, just to bewitch him with something else, so that he doesn't even notice when she snatches that promise back until it's too late. This is the first time she hasn't run away, though. He has her now. He could push. But, inexplicably, he doesn't. Not tonight.

* * *

><p><em>TBC<em>


	6. if only you could see

VI. _if only you could see . . ._

The lawman starts out as a good time, a warm distraction from her turmoil, stress, worry, but soon becomes something more, a potential threat of exposure. He's a U.S. Marshal for Christ's sake. Sure, there's a connection. He reminds her of McHale. And there's just something about that soft-spoken intensity that calls to a girl like Zoë. She _wants_ to be able to trust the man. But that's illogical. She doesn't know him. And he doesn't know her. Not to be melodramatic or anything, but an indiscretion like this could very well cost Zoë her destiny.

Think about it. What if he exposes her? Up in Eden Falls, she's never had to fret over things like that. _It takes a cape to keep a secret_ should be scrawled on their _Welcome To _sign. Most of the populace knows the score. But outside the cape, she has to consider these risks. Maybe it's not as urgent as when she's traveling, and she has to worry about villagers trying to burn her at the stake, but it's still important.

Then again, if she does come clean with the lawman—which would pretty much just be perfunctory at this point—and he reacts badly, she can always use one of Henry's special forgetting hexes to blur the memory out. In such a case, she is confident that her normal distaste for tampering with people's minds wouldn't outweigh the need for it.

Tossing her head back and forth against the pillow, body unconsciously shifting in slight but noticeable increments, Zoë works through all of this in one of her characteristic halfway-between-awake-and-unaware states. It's a good time to think. When she's asleep is the only time the power shows any kind of regard for yanking her into the stream. Not to say that it won't, if the occasion arises, but it's not as frequent. And once her subconscious has that disquiet resolved, she sinks deeper into the abyss, finding real rest.

* * *

><p>As the bluish light of the predawn hour bleeds into a bright sunup, Raylan finds himself stirred automatically from his sleep. It's not an overly unusual occurrence to have someone filling up the remaining space of his bed when he wakes, but it's not typical, either. It takes him a second or so to unwind while his up-top brain reboots.<p>

Recall for the night before is a bit hazy. Enough of an impression has been made to keep confusion at bay, though.

Beside him, there is a plentiful halo of sable waves spilled across the pillow, a pure contrast to the white backdrop beneath. It's only softened with the way the golden light filtering in through the flimsy drapes makes the sight shine, rebounding off the veneer of gloss that seems to have the girl eternally enveloped.

Raylan turns his head, props up on an elbow, and spends a long moment just absorbing the foreign image. She's as out of place here as she acts. All odd behavior aside, it's the accent and the words that flow out so fluidly and the quicksilver way about her that makes it painfully obvious. But more than that, it's the untouched look of her—like that luminescence has spread its glow to every aspect of the girl. She's grace, and she's gloss, and there's something vaguely unreal about her, as if she's gone her whole life without having the smog tarnish her, which he's always considered impossible.

He's been trying to escape this place from the moment he could walk. One way or another, though, something always leads him back. It's in his blood.

Seems to him, girl like Zoë Zuko don't belong nowhere near here with the soiled quality of his world and the inbred coating of unkempt life.

But all that's just the impression looking at her now leaves on him, slumbering in peace like Sleeping Beauty, casting a better light across her worn-out environment.

He's never thought himself the type to be bewitched by those troublesome womanly wiles. But he's gotta admit that that's what it sure feels like. He tries to keep on edge, and has to remind himself now and again, because she's so damn disarming, even when she should logically be the complete opposite.

Shaking off the dreamlike musing, Raylan slips cautiously out of bed, drags on his discarded pair of Levi's, and snags a flannel shirt hanging off the back of his desk chair. It hangs loose and open on him as he grabs his wallet, his keys, and latches the door closed behind him as silently as humanly possible.

He wants her to go on sleeping as deeply as she's able while he's gone, because he doesn't wanna come back to an empty room and no Zoë in sight, which is more than likely. Every time she leaves his periphery, he gets the unquellable sense that he's never gonna see her again. If he never sees her again, he's never gonna get his answers, and then the echo of that girl is gonna haunt him for the rest of his miserable days.

He just knows it.

On his way back, he's pulling off the street when he catches a flash of refined color flipping around a corner of the building. With a long-suffering sigh, Raylan parks his town car at the curb of the entrance to the lot, out of sight. Holder full of coffee cups in hand, he treks around the front office, stops behind a corner that turns into the narrow pavilion. He lets the déjà vu wash over him without notice.

"Are you sure?" he hears the girl ask someone, and she sounds anxious, excited. A glance into the alley between buildings tells him that she's got a phone plastered to her ear. "Excellent. Send me the coordinates."

In a pair of white denim shorts with a rolled hem, a loose-fitting black tank top, her long mane of hair corralled into another ponytail, and scuffed sneakers, she almost looks appropriate in her setting. Almost. No matter how she's disguised, she can't quite hide that high-class sheen.

"Weaver," she says abruptly, stressing the syllables with her knotted nerves. "I know the rules, _okay_." She's in the shade, pacing before the row of venders, thumbnail distractedly between her teeth. Her body's tension belies the security she projects with her voice. "As long as I put it back exactly where I found it, exactly _when_ I found it, there shouldn't be those kinds of consequences. Just send me the chart."

Raylan angles into the pavilion when she inadvertently gives him her back. She's ducking her head, pulling her cell down to scroll the LCD screen, checking that text message she'd demanded, no doubt.

Once she has what she needs, Zoë lets out an expressive exhale. He's nearly snuck up behind her when something weird starts to happen, striking him with stunned hesitation. The warm breeze around them spikes, volleying away from her as if she's knocked it back, and the shadowed silhouette of the girl takes on a sudden glimmer. That shimmering spark brightens for no more than a heartbeat, like the power surge of a starburst right before it pitches. Blink and you'd miss it.

But the marshal doesn't blink. No, he reacts on instinct instead, pivoting over the lingering distance and latching one arm around the wavering solidity of the girl at the last second. This will solve the problem of his cluelessness, once and for all, he knows.

Only after he's caught her does it occur to him that he's just leapt before he looked. Now he's hitching a ride through _something_. There's a world-spinning dizziness about whatever it is he's careening along. It's like he's been detached from his body, though he can feel it dragging behind them, like a tow. He can still feel himself holding onto the girl, but it's not right, not tangible.

Vaguely, he's reminded of the time his struggle with a fugitive got him tipped into the wild rapids of the river, and he was left at the mercy of the current. Every now and again that force would propel him into a rock and leave him senseless. Yeah, that's definitely what this is like.

When the rushing stops, he's lost track of time. Has it been an hour, a day, or just a few moments? He lurches forward, expelled from the current, and lands on his knees over something hard like stone.

"What the hell?" a familiar voice exclaims, reverberating inside the confines of his skull. He tries to look up towards the sound, tries to catalogue his surroundings, but it's impossible for the moment. Vertigo is kicking his ass.

"Zoë?"

"_Oy vey_," she sighs, and it's softer this time, less affronted, more resigned. "Looks like the trauma of the shift has got a good grip on you—and serves you right for hijacking me like that. You have no idea how badly that could have turned out."

"You're saying it turned out well?" he retorts, understandably incredulous. He doesn't try to open his eyes, or move at all from the position he's found himself in, because he has a worrying feeling about what will happen if he does.

"You're still alive, aren't you?" She sounds arch. He knows she's got her arms crossed now. "Not missing any pieces?"

"_Are_ we still alive?" he wants to know, but he's more curious than he is freaked out.

Zoë gives him another vaguely patronizing sigh. "Yes, alive and well. Thanks to me."

"What did you do?" he starts to question, only to be disrupted when his stomach rolls threateningly, trying to lodge itself in his throat. Hands dig fiercely into the unsmooth surface of the bedrock beneath him. He's doubled over, suffering through the wretchedness of whatever his body is going through. "What's happened to us?"

The girl doesn't answer. Instead, she crouches down beside him, brushes her fingers lightly through his hair. "I should have known you wouldn't let it go," she murmurs wryly, and then slides her hand around his neck, splays over his back, begins rubbing in soothing circles. It's the barest of touches, yet it helps ease the blinding discomfort, lessens it into something manageable. "It will pass. The first trip is always the hardest."

And it does. Eventually.

By the time he's steady enough to climb to his feet, she's examined their location, compared it with the GPS chart saved on her phone with latitude and longitude markers, and settled on her course of action.

"Were one of those for me?" she asks him, stirring Raylan to attention. He finds her motioning towards the remnants of his morning run a few feet away. But he's more interested in the fact that they are currently standing at the peak of a cliff, overlooking a hundred-foot drop of a waterfall. All around, an evergreen forest winds outward. "Oh, well. No sense whining over spilt coffee."

"Zoë—" he begins, only to be cut off by her messenger bag colliding with his chest. His arms go up automatically and pin it there. He sends her a quizzical look, but she's too busy jerking off her sneakers to notice.

"Okay," she says, scanning their surroundings, before she steps up to a protruding lip of the cliff. "Wait here."

"Zo—" he tries again, only to be interrupted this time by the girl diving over the edge without any sort of preamble.

He thought this would make things make sense. He should have known better.

Eyes widening, brow rising, Raylan slants over the apex of the cliff in time to watch her slice herself through the cerulean water with a sharp splash, leaving a rippling wake. Breathless, he waits an uncomfortable moment to see her surface, perfectly fine. She sucks in a big gulp of oxygen before she upends herself again. Even from up here, he can see the murky outline of her motions until she swims too deep to be visible.

Sighing in defeat, he turns away from the edge, hooks the strap of her bag on his shoulder, bends to grab up her discarded sneakers, and starts winding his way down the side of the plunge waterfall. It's a ten-minute hike, and he's only just made it down to the shore of the basin when she comes up for the last time, hoisting herself up onto a patch of loose rocks nearby.

"I take it this is you looking for something?" he comments, all mild like. He tries to hand over her shoes, but she says keep 'em, and then she's wringing out her wet locks and the excess water from her top beside him. "You ready to talk?"

"Let me get through this first," she pleads, still preoccupied. "Cop a squat. Don't be in a hurry. I need equipment."

"Now, hang on a—"

"I'll be right back," she promises, and then that shimmery thing happens again, and she's gone.

He's left with the burning urge to _kick_ through something. Preferably her. Dropping to have a seat on the stretch of rock, he decides that he's reached his last resort. It's time to just grab that girl and lock her in a box until he gets her talking. Except that that won't work, either. She'll just shimmer her way out.

"_Son of a bitch_," he murmurs softly, dipping his chin towards his chest and scuffing a hand through his uncombed hair.

The sun is bright and the air is fresh in a tangy kind of way that feels odd in his lungs. Birds sing in the distance. Other than that, though, there's no sign of civilization. From the way of the woods, it's fairly obvious that he's not in Kentucky anymore.

Five minutes go by, then ten, and he's too restless to do nothing, so he pulls the girl's messenger bag onto his lap and starts snooping.

He fingers all the various vials and satchels, trying to guess what they're for. She's practically got a whole apothecary in her pack. Strange is the word. And then there are the normal items—a soft-bristled hairbrush, some very private lady products, a waterproof packet of makeup, a dial of birth control pills. Underneath the first aid kit is the baton she used last night and a pair of holstered daggers with dark-carved hilts.

At the very bottom of the bag, he finds a small leather-bound journal. The cover is soft and smooth, and the metal latch is still shiny, so he knows that it's fairly new. Popping that latch, Raylan peels the leather open and flips through the first few pages.

Sure enough, her calligraphy is as graceful as her speech. Letters are lined and sharp, where he expects them to be soft and curved. She writes with purpose, verging on obligation. There's no introductory _Dear Diary_, only an efficient _November 3rd._

Feeling less than honorable, Raylan splays the journal in his lap, props an arm behind him and leans back, skimming the abbreviated entries. He's thirty pages in when Zoë reappears, lugging a cylinder of oxygen and a rebreather set. Standing above him, she lets her acquired gear clatter to the ground and gives the marshal a long look, her expression unreadable. He doesn't try to pretend he's not doing what he's doing. And she doesn't say anything about it.

"I've got to get down into the caves," she tells him, gesturing towards the base of the pounding waterfall. She bends, gets herself to the very edge of the outcropping, and lets her legs swing down toward the plunge pool. Moving deftly, she begins strapping herself into the gear. "Have you ever been SCUBA diving, cowboy?"

Sitting forward, Raylan nudges her journal shut, but leaves it lying in his lap. As the strengthening sun pierces his vision, he wishes for his hat. "Can't say as I have."

"I've done it once or twice over the years." She's concentrating on what she's doing, not looking at him, and he's left with a sense of disquiet because of it. "Never on a closed-circuit set like this one, though. But it is lighter, makes less noise, better for this particular venture. Plus," she adds with a sheepish shrug, "it's all I could get my hands on without hassle."

"Fascinating," he deadpans, not entirely sarcastic.

All finished, Zoë pauses to glance over her shoulder, and their eyes lock. "I'm a touch claustrophobic," she confesses, mouth quirked. "So this should be fun."

"You're—"

"Could you toss me one of my blades?" she smoothly interjects, turning back to her gear. The damp ringlets of her ponytail scatter over her shoulders, baring the nape of her neck, but curtaining her face. A tiny splotch of ink glints in the bright sunlight there. Some kind of tattoo, he sees. Almost like a solar cross.

Indulgent, though reluctantly so, Raylan does as she asks. Once she has the blade tucked into the waistband of her shorts, right at the hip, Zoë switches on the rebreather, bites down on the mouthpiece of a regulator, and boosts herself off the outcropped rock.

_December 13th . . ._

_The sheriff's deputy has moved in with us. That freaky fire in the apartment complex has uprooted a lot of people in town. Aunt Ari turned away at least five of the misfits wanting to crash. Personally, I would have let them, but she's always been the levelheaded one of the family._

_Some instances are just disasters waiting to happen._

_She wanted to refuse the deputy as well, but Uncle John intervened, told her that Kyle Lovell would bring no trouble to our doorstep, insisted that the poor fellow deserved a bit of fortune after all he'd been through these last few years. I have to agree, what with his father going postal, his "condition" coming back, and Aviva Miller up and disappearing on him with nothing but a note for goodbye._

_He's renting out Bobbi's old room. It's right down the hall from mine. I don't mind so much, because he and I have always gotten along well enough. At night, though, I can sometimes hear him through the walls, having those sleep terrors of his. Pavor nocturnus, they call it. It's rare out of childhood, but I understand why he'd suffer it, and am frankly surprised that I don't too. A parasomnia disorder characterized by the subconscious feeling of "someone or something wanting control of you" sounds right up my alley._

_Most of the time, it's only low-level noises and sleep paralysis. But, on occasion, it gets so bad that one of us will have to go in and physically disturb him. The screaming can be ignored. But when the hallucinations are strong, it's more merciful to interrupt. When this happens, he's inconsolable. But if we can jolt him awake, he takes care of himself, unaccepting of any offered compassion. He'll apologize profusely for the inconvenience, no matter how many times Aunt Ari insists that he's being ridiculous._

_When these episodes happen while I'm at home, I have to admit that it leaves me really shaken. I know that it shouldn't. I know that I should be able to deal with these things without letting them get to me. Mom never did. She was the foundation, regardless of what was happening, and she couldn't be corrupted. That's what I'm supposed to be now. Yet I can't help being convinced that I'm just . . . not up for this._

It's nearly half an hour later that Zoë resurfaces in a burst of bubbles. She comes up to the edge of bedrock, tears off her goggles and mouthpiece, hooks a forearm onto the edge to keep afloat while she unfastens herself from the rebreather. He closes the journal, slides it back into her bag, and watches her heave the tank out of the water. The rest of the girl's gear follows. Finally, she slaps a hand onto the stone, releasing her white-knuckled grip on her dagger and a new moss-covered object.

"I found it!" she breathily exclaims, levering herself up out of the plunge pool. Her cheeks are flushed and her sapphire eyes sparkle. She rolls over the edge, lands flat on her back, arms wide, and says again, mostly for herself, "I found it."

While the girl rests there, blinking up at the cloudless sky, Raylan unfolds himself, rising up onto his feet. He sidles over to her, crouches, and sweeps the object into his hands before she can prevent him. Stroking his thumb along the textured length to clean all the soggy moss off, he finds an antique cross made of brass, welded like nothing he's ever seen before. "What is this?"

"A long lost relic of Saint Anthony," she answers without hesitation, still just staring up at that sky like she's waiting for something.

Raylan straightens, casts a long shadow across the girl. "What's it for?"

That gets her eyes to slide. When their gazes connect, she upturns her mouth in a soft display of self-deprecation. "Honest answer?" she retorts after that important pause. "It's material for a locator's spell. A friend of mine is missing. That right there just might help me find her."

"Alright," he drawls, dragging the word out as he struggles to absorb that with a straight face. He's unsure of whether to be dubious at hearing the word _spell_ or just plain relieved that the girl is finally coming clean with something. For the moment, he opts for continued neutrality. "So what's next?"

"Next?" Hesitating for a heavy sigh, Zoë thrusts her hands into the air, makes a _gimme_ motion to get him to haul her up. "Well, I need to drop the relic off at a friend's, since he's the expert and knows what to try with it, and then I'll take you home."

"_And_?" he prompts, his gaze going flint.

Zoë cants her head at him, cutely. "And whatever you want, cowboy. I'm feeling pretty good today."

"Fine," he allows, letting go of her hand and wiping the dampness rubbed off on his palm against the thigh of his jeans.

"Fine," she mimics playfully, spinning and bending to gather up all of her gear. She hooks the rebreather and cylinder over her shoulder, asks him to get her bag, hooks that on her other shoulder, and turns back to Raylan with wide eyes and an imperceptible smirk, looking buried under all that paraphernalia. Offering out her only free hand, she waggles her fingers invitingly at him and quips, "Ready for the ride?"

* * *

><p>One might think that HQ of the timeless Imperial Order sector for world improvement would be tucked away on an isolated island in the Red Sea, perhaps lost in anonymity down near the NYC warehouse district, or set up as a secret underground structure in Eastern Europe. But one would be wrong.<p>

Up on the 17th floor of an inconspicuous Seattle skyscraper, an auspicious man stands behind a marble-topped desk, looking out at the murky city stretched before him. In the distance, the Space Needle can be spotted. This is a relatively young man, lean and in shape, but with an endearingly boyish look about his face. A façade of such is ruined only by the detached air, the ominous calculation that lurks in his eyes. There is something unsettling about the quiet confidence this man exudes.

Known as Ian Phillips, this man is deeply troubled at the moment. His status quo has been disturbed—not for the first time since he ever heard the cursed name of Zoë Zuko.

Having his current position as regional head of the Order taken into account, Ian has always considered himself an honest man—honest with himself, if not honest with others. There was a day not too long ago when he would have been at ease here, at peace with the life he leads, the mission he holds, and the methods for which he carries out said mission. Now, he's afraid that those days are behind him for good.

Ian has also always considered himself as a man too sensible to become fixated with any goal he might take on. Obsession is for the weak. In fact, he still believes such a thing, very much so. Yet, as of late, his thoughts have circled just one woman, just one objective, just one vendetta. There is nothing he can do to put it from his mind.

This fixation only worsens whenever one of his Sirens comes through the door with news of another failure on the U.S. Marshal front, exactly as the beautiful but deadly Agent Anya does now.

With her spiraled red hair and innate temptress's face in place, his agent comes into the office while his back is turned, her gait uncharacteristically reluctant. He deducts enough from that inconsequential detail to know why she's here before the Siren even opens her mouth to report.

Because he knows it was her brethren's failure, not Anya's personally, he doesn't allow his ire to rise against her.

"Director," she begins with an imploring inflection to her contralto voice, and Ian rotates to face her for the first time since her entry. "I know it's not my place, but I would suggest that I be assigned this particular task in place of Agent Lee. Given my history with Zuko, I think I'm better suited for it."

"Possibly," is all he deems to give, one way or the other.

Anya ventures closer with a warranted hesitation. His hands are hidden in the pockets of his trousers and it makes her uneasy, though she doesn't show it. Her uniform robes have been replaced by a dark pantsuit, blazer left open over a highly inappropriate corseted halter. Temptress is right. It makes his lips twitch. "Well, _someone_ will need to, seeing as Lee returned in a body bag."

"My condolences," says Ian, sans any shred of sincerity. "Have you been to speak with the readers?"

The redhead draws in a grim breath. "I have."

"Then you're aware the results of the tapestry have altered."

She purses her lips in displeasure, holds her tongue on the caustic remark that wants to flow, because it may be construed as disrespectful. "Yes," she concedes, and here is where the reluctance surfaces. "Though the marshal is still a void, it is obvious that it's his involvement that makes a difference. Regardless of this new change, eliminating him is still our best play."

Director Phillips raises his brow high at that. "How can you be so sure?" And the redhead knows a trap when she finds one.

Proceeding with caution, she tells him, "I've been doing this a long time. If we expect to pull off Operation Black Forest without interference from the Mother Sentinel, we must make sure that she is so thoroughly preoccupied that she doesn't catch the rift when it's created. For that to be possible, she'd—"

"—need to be disconnected with her power long enough to not be attracted to the disturbance, while brief enough to not raise suspicion," he cuts in. "Yes, I know."

"Then you must see why this is our best preemptive option."

"Oh, I must?" he taunts, mild annoyance clear in his eyes, if not the amused line of his mouth. "Don't presume so much, Anya. The readers could have easily misinterpreted the situation—they're only glorified analysts for God's sake. Who knows for certain whether this doppelgänger is truly the cause of what we see in the tapestry? Taking him out of the equation could ensure absolutely nothing. Or it could backfire, ensure that things go down exactly as the tapestry predicts, and we'd have sabotaged ourselves."

"It could also be what we need."

"There's no way to know for sure." His aloof expression goes patronizing. "Is there?"

"Perhaps, then," she goes on with an evil little smile and a knowing look, "we should simply kill her off. If it's timed right, we could accomplish the op before the power settles into a new host. With the confusion of transference and all the catch-up whatever Zuko steps in will be busy with, there are a good percentage of odds that this particular rift would never call the Mother Sentinel back."

"You have a point." But the man's clear eyes have turned hard and sharp, telling her that she's gone too far. "However, we're better off in the long run with an adversary we know well."

She knows it's time to back off. Yet she persists. "It wouldn't matter if we took out her predecessor successively. There aren't many gifted of the bloodline left." There's banked fire in her eyes as she presses her hands down against his desktop and leans forward. "What if we end it altogether?"

This isn't the first time such has been brought up to Director Phillips. Not by a long shot. Every time it is addressed, he feels himself go rigid through no control of his own. This secret weakness only infuriates him, alighting on an internal tangle of doubt, recrimination, and loathing. He's an embarrassment to his father, to this office, to himself, only no one knows it. If there ever comes a day when this buried weakness is put to the test, he isn't completely sure how he will choose—though he hopes desperately that he would be strong enough to do what's right.

To the waiting agent, he retorts, "You know the rules."

Heeding the ice in his voice and the warning in his stare, Anya ever so subtly retreats. "Yes, but that doesn't mean I agree with this one in specific."

"You don't have to," he bites back, all out of patience. "You just have to respect it. These ways were invoked and enforced by our founders for good reason. You may not understand those reasons, but that does not invalidate them. Are we clear?"

The redhead takes another small step backwards, going sullen in her own cold passive-aggressive kind of way. "Yes."

"I'm sick of this debate," he says, turning away with a dismissive wave of one hand. "The assignment is yours. Take whoever you choose."

"Then I would ask for Agent Halle to be relocated from her new security detail back to the Sirens. I want her with me for this."

"She's yours." His tone is clipped. His shoulders are set. Gazing out at the city in distraction, he doesn't glance back to watch the reprimanded Siren exit. His mind is already miles away, circling again around the proverbial forbidden fruit, and it doesn't care how unwilling he is.

* * *

><p>"I'll take you home," she assures him. Yeah, right. That's before their brief stopover at a Main Street bookstore in a little northern town called Eden Falls, where she passes the unearthed relic off to an old man named Henry, and inevitably tacks on a condition. "Just let me stop by my house for a minute." Not that Raylan entirely minds. The longer he tags along on her errands, the more of her secrets he learns.<p>

He can't say for sure what he'd been expecting "home" to mean to someone like Zoë, but it's definitely _not_ what he gets.

By the time he's able to escape the clutches of two very broad, very Irish, very protective brothers, he's noticeably worse for wear—and all the more awed by the source of his latest predicament. A shy strawberry-blonde slip of a girl named Hanna leads him to the Windsor staircase, tucked deep in the center of the house, and all the way up to a spacious attic, where he finds the raven-haired enigma leant against a bookcase, her nose buried in a huge tome.

Pausing in the open doorway to get collected, Raylan straightens out his sad flannel shirt and dusts off the newly-acquired tear in the shoulder and rakes his disheveled hair out of his eyes. Maybe he should be irritated. In reality, he can't help but chuckle.

The sound draws Zoë's attention. It's a long moment before her clouded gaze clears. When it does, and she gets a load of him, her mouth breaks into a lopsided smirk and those sapphire eyes sparkle. "Have some trouble there, Marshal Givens?"

"You're a cruel, cruel woman for leaving me down there alone," he drawls in a low tone of amusement. Ambling lazily inward, he gestures at her full-of-tome arms in question and wonders, "This is the bit of business you had to take care—heavy reading?" He's outwardly incredulous. "You a librarian or something?"

The girl's smirk becomes a soft smile as she flattens the tome to her chest and crosses over to the gathered ring of antique furniture. "No, that's Hanna."

He stands where he is, hands propped on narrow hips, and watches her sink into a pastel fainting couch to drop the tome open on her lap. She doesn't try to conceal it, but she does flip pages until she's past a certain something, like she's trying to be up-front while still censoring what he sees.

Not quite ready to call her on it, he opts for a simpler direction with his next inquiry. "I get the feeling you're somewhat . . . well-traveled, let's say. How do you do what needs done in foreign lands?"

Zoë's brow goes up. "Come again?"

"What do you do about languages?" he clarifies with a shift of weight from one booted foot to the other.

"I study them," she answers without hesitating for consideration, "but it'd be impossible to be fluent in every dialect I might need. For a solution, we Zuko women wear _these_." Elbow on the aged page of the tome, her hand raises to finger at one of the three pendants worn around her neck. "It's a talisman charmed as a universal translator. It does all the hard work for me when I need it." What she doesn't say is that this particular talisman was actually charmed by her mother not too long before she passed.

Raylan still hasn't figured out how to respond to something like that. He knows that he better get to it soon.

At his silence, the girl sits back, and her face softens with disarming warmth. "In my journal," she begins, "did you find any of the answers you were looking for?"

Sighing, he moves closer through no conscious effort of his own. "Only got myself another dozen questions," he retorts. "May I join you?"

Zoë slants so that there's a vacancy in the short stretch of cushion for him. When he sits sideways, knee up against the back, and hooks an arm over the wooden rim of the settee, she shuts the codex and adjusts herself to mirror his posture.

"Serves me right for invading your privacy, I suppose."

"You think?" she teases, a soft vibration rising from her chest. Eyes straying downward, he takes note of the V-necked top she's got on in place of her soaked cami, but the white shorts are the same and they've dried. "We could try right now." Her voice is so casual, he almost misses that it's an opportunity she's presenting.

"Yeah?" drawls Raylan with a suspicious look.

Zoë laughs. "Yeah. Keeping it secret any longer would only be formality at this point, right? And I've got a little time."

"Explain one thing off-topic for my first," he implores, and knows darn well that he shouldn't be procrastinating at a fork in the road like this. "It's about something I read in your journal."

Edgy all of a sudden, the girl leans to put space between them as she says, "Shoot."

"Who's this Deputy Lovell guy? What's his story?"

Blatantly taken aback by this, she blinks at him, frowns. "Kyle?"

Raylan nods.

"Oh." Catching her lip between her teeth and worrying at it, she spends a few moments thinking before she recalls the written entries that focus on the deputy. When she finally goes into explanation, her words are measured. "I'd say the first thing you should know about Lovell—if you wanted to know about him—is that he's a null."

"A null what?"

"Just a null person," she says with an ambiguous shrug. "It's what we call those rare people that are born with an aversion to magic. By that, I don't mean they're prejudiced. I mean they're not affected by it." At his drawn expression, she switches into condensed lecture mode with a put-upon sigh. "There are several kinds of nulls. Some are immune to all sorts of the supernatural. Others, who are more powerful, actually resemble black holes—when magic gets into their vicinity, it's rendered devoid of juice." Her face scrunches. "I guess. It's complicated."

Going with the flow, Raylan asks, "Is this Lovell the former or the latter?"

"Former. If he was the latter, he sure as hell couldn't be living here with me. He's not powerful. He's just afflicted." He watches her mood darken into something almost mournful, definitely sympathetic, and finds himself all the more puzzled. "That wouldn't necessarily be a big deal, being immune to magic and all, but it's different for Kyle."

"How so?"

"Well, for starters, his gift has triggered this neurological condition that comes and goes, ever since he was born. Scientists know it as idiopathic neuropathy. It happens sometimes when nulls are created in places with unusual amounts of magical presence."

"Never heard of it."

"Basically, it's a hitch in his brain's makeup. He can't physically feel. It's like the receptors for sensation in his nervous system are dormant." She finds herself slanting forward into the lawman's personal space and she can't help herself. "He can't feel pain, or pleasure, or even temperatures."

Raylan is caught in her stare. All that empathy she's conveying is being projected onto him and there's nothing he can do to avoid it. "Must be hell."

Zoë gives him a bittersweet smile. "The only exception is when it comes to certain types of magic, which he didn't discover until he was partnered up with a natural witch, few years back. Supposedly, she was born in Eden Falls then given up for adoption, ended up in Boston, raised by norms, and didn't even know anything about it until coming back here on a case."

"Aviva," he guesses.

"That's the one." There's something in her tone that suggests she's not too happy with said witch at the moment. Instead of elaborating on that, she straightens up out of his space and lightens her demeanor. "Since people with magic in their blood are the only ones he can feel, Kyle likes to keep them close."

"That's why he's living here?"

Zoë nods, lips compressed. "It's a real cluster of Catch-22s. He's trying to live as normal a life he can, which is only possible by living near the _ab_normal. Due to his disorder, witches and our ilk are all that can sensationally affect him because of our magic, even though our magic has no effect on him because he's a null." She sends him a wry look and rolls her eyes. "Irony all around, isn't it?"

"I'll say," he drawls distractedly. With her extreme proximity no longer preoccupying him, Raylan angles his body a different direction, stares off into the minimal distance afforded here. As he lets the spiel of information sink in, silence envelops them, thickening the air. At last, he turns back to her and says, "Alright. Let's have it."

"Well," she replies falteringly, "I should probably start with my family legacy then. So how do you feel about time-travel?"

* * *

><p><em>TBC<em>


End file.
